flA 


Misslerr 

J 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


ILL 


MISS  JERRY 


m'fA 


MISS  JERRY:::BY 

ALEXANDER   BLACK 


WITH  THIRTY-SEI/EN 
ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM 
LIFE  PHOTOGRAPHS 
BY  THE  AUTHOR 


CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

NEW  YORK  MDCCCXCV 


COPYRIGHT,    1895,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

[All  rights  reserved] 


PREFACE 

<nr>HE  text  of  "Miss  Jerry  "  was  not  originally 
designed  for  print,  but  for  oral  delivery  in 
partnership  -with  the  series  of  250  photographs 
from  life,  with  which  it  formed  what  I  have  called 
a  "picture  play. ' '  The  original  draft  of  the  story 
was  but  little  longer  than  the  reading  version  used 
in  public  ;  and  although  it  seemed  probable  that  I 
might  at  some  time  arrange  the  story  for  book 
publication,  it  was  not  until  the  unexpectedly  defi 
nite  success  of  the  picture  play  brought  with  it 
repeated  requests  to  print,  that  the  availability  of 
the  existing  draft  came  into  consideration  at  all. 
It  was  urged  that  the  colloquial,  story-telling  cast 
which  I  had  sought  to  give  to  the  text,  in  view  of 
its  use  in  oral  delivery  before  audiences,  could 
not  be  regarded  as  disqualifying :  but  despite  this 
opinion  and  many  kindly  comments  on  the  story, 
as  &itch,  from  critics  and  correspondents,  it  was 


1782173 


PREFACE 

impossible  to  prepare  "  Miss  Jerry  "  for  pub 
lication  -without  certain  changes,  necessitated  by 
the  fact  that  in  the  picture  play  I  tell  much  of  the 
story  -with  the  pictures. 

And  here  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  explain 
that  "  Miss  Jerry  ' '  was  cast  as  a  play  is  cast,  and 
the  successive  scenes  photographed  phase  by  phase 
from  the  living  people.  The  interiors,  excepting 
only  the  interior  of  Mr.  Chauncey  M.  Depew's 
private  office  at  the  Grand  Central  Station,  are 
fictitious  ;  that  is  to  say,  they  were  devised  under 
the  skylight  of  a  studio.  In  the  street  scenes  I 
introduced  the  backgrounds  of  real  life,  bringing 
the  fictitious  action  of  the  story  against  the  actual 
lineaments  of  the  city  In  some  instances  the 
pictures  preceded  the  writing  of  the  text,  and  in 
others  the  text  was  modified,  for  the  purposes  of 
the  picture  play,  to  bring  about  a  more  perfect 
harmony  between  both  than  would  have  been  pos 
sible  had  the  text  been  fixed,  and  the  photography 
a  form  of  illustrating. 

The  250 pictures  prepared  in  this  way  are  thrown 
upon  a  sheet  by  the  aid  of  the  stereopticon,  dissolv 
ing  one  into  another  at  the  rate  of  three  or  four  to 
the  minute,  the  oral  story  moving  concurrently 


PREFACE 

with  the  picture  story  as  the  eye  thus  receives  it. 
In  such  a  plan  much  of  description  may  be  omit 
ted  from  the  reading  version,  since  the  pictures 
to  a  great  extent  tell  what  the  characters  look 
like  and  do,  while  the  monologue  concerns  itself 
more  especially  with  what  they  think  and  say.  The 
illustrations  to  this  volume  represent  a  selection 
from  the  series  of  pictures,  with  two  scenes — the 
first  talk  between  Jerry  and  Pink,  and  the  final 
scene  between  Jerry  and  Hamilton — approximately 
complete. 

In  this  triangular  partner  ship  between  the  art  of 
fiction,  the  art  of  the  tableau  vivant  and  the  sci 
ence  of  photography,  I  have  sought  to  test  certain 
possibilities  of  illusion,  with  this  aim  always  be 
fore  me,  that  the  illusion  should  not,  because  it 
need  not  and  could  not  safely,  be  that  of  photo 
graphs  from  an  acted  play,  nor  that  of  an  artist' s 
illustrations,  but  the  illusion  of  reality.  If  it  is 
the  function  of  art  to  translate  nature,  it  is  the 
privilege  of  photography  to  transmit  nature.  Thus, 
I  have  sought  to  illustrate  art  with  life. 

I  think  that  I  may  be  pardoned  for  expressing 
in  this  place  my  gratitude  to  those  who,  in  the 
heat-  of  the  hottest  of  hot  summers,  underwent 


PREFACE 

the  discomforture  of  participation  in  the  making 
of  the  first  picture  play.  I  -wish  to  make  grateful 
acknowledgment  to  that  wittiest  of  orators  and 
most  gracious  of  wits,  Mr.  Depew ;  to  Official 
Weather  Forecaster  Elias  B.  Dunn,  who  since 
the  interview  on  the  top  of  the  Equitable  building 
has  been  translated  to  that  "  higher  tower  to  the 
south,"  and  to  Superintendent  Martin  of  the 
great  bridge.  For  assistance  in  casting  the  story 
I  am  indebted  to  the  President  of  the  American 
Academy  of  the  Dramatic  Arts,  Mr.  Franklin  S. 
Sargent. 

ALEXANDER  BLACK, 


CHARACTERS  OF  THE  STORY: 

GERALDINE  HOLBROOK,  the  Princess  of  Panther  Mine. 

MRS.  REMSEN-HOLT,  a  Young  Club  Woman. 

GRACIE  DEMOND,  the  Rose  of  the  Rockies. 

OLIVIA  PRATTSBY,  a  Retired  Bud. 

Miss  DOROTHY  WALSH,  a  Social  Favorite. 

Miss  MAUD  RUTHERFORD,  of  a  very  good  family. 

MRS.  DYCKMAN,  who  gives  a  ball. 

THE  WRITER  OF  THE  LETTER. 

KATE,  a  Servant. 

MR.  RICHARD  HOLBROOK,  of  the  Panther  Mine. 

MR.  WALTER  HAMILTON,  of  the  New  York  Daily  Dynamo. 

J.  SYLVESTER  WARD,  Pres.  of  the  Long  Creek  Mine  Co. 

"  PINK"  LOPER,  of  the  Mammoth  Museum. 

FREDERICK  PRENTISS,  a  New  Bear. 

MR.  DYCKMAN,  husband  of  Mrs.  Dyckman. 

THE  ENGLISH  CRITIC. 

THE  WAITER  OF  THE  MONASTERY. 

OLD  PRATTSBY,  who  still  insists  upon  dancing. 

TIME  :  WINTER  AND  SPRING  OF  1893-4. 
SCENE  :  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


MISS  JERRY 

1 

THE  letter  that  Richard  Holbrook  had  re 
ceived  from  Colorado  contained  some 
bad  news.  It  was  one  of  those  letters 
which  when  you  read  them  twice  sound  worse 
the  second  time.  The  cloud  of  approaching 
disaster  had  fallen  upon  the  Panther  Mine. 
There  seemed  no  longer  to  be  any  hope. 

When  he  went  into  the  West  with  his 
young  wife,  after  the  business  crash  of  '73,  Hol 
brook  had  no  romantic  ideas  of  fortune  mak 
ing.  He  had  expected  a  hard  fight;  and  he 
found  it.  Harder  to  bear  than  the  stress  of 
those  early  struggles  had  been  the  stroke  of 
death  that  left  the  young  miner  alone  with  his 
baby  girl. 

Geraldine  !  She  was  the  only  girl  in  the 
county  then.  They  called  her  the  Princess  of 
Panther  Mine. 


MISS  JERRY 

For  her  sake  he  had  regretted  the  rough 
life  at  the  mines  and  the  cow  camps.  For  her 
sake,  and  for  the  sweet  memory  of  that  brave 


young  wife,  he  had  performed  prodigies  of 
labor,  and  beside  the  evening  lamp  he  had 
planned  the  child's  lessons  for  the  following 
day. 

How  he  had  missed  Geraldine,  and  how 
the  camp  had  missed  her,  when  she  went 
away  to  the  academy! 


MISS  JERRY 

On  returning  to  New  York,  after  spending 
fifteen  years  beyond  the  Mississippi,  he  had 
taken  a  house  in  one  of  those  quiet  cross 
streets  just  north  of  Washington  Square.  The 
elevated  railroad  rattled  across  one  end  of  the 
thoroughfare,  and  from  the  opposite  direction, 
in  subdued  echoes,  came  the  roar  of  Broadway. 
But  West  Tenth  Street,  almost  staidly  dull,  al 
ways  had  the  air  of  scorning  to  listen  to  these 
vulgar  noises. 

And  now,  after  five  years  in  New  York, 
Holbrook  began  to  feel  the  necessity  of  mak 
ing  some  radical  changes  in  his  way  of  living. 
He  flattered  himself  that  he  had  kept  from 
Geraldine  a  knowledge  of  the  awkward  situ 
ation  in  his  New  York  investments  within  the 
past  year.  Yet  it  was  not  possible  much 
longer  to  conceal  from  her  the  distressing 
truth,  and  this  brought  a  bitterness  that  nothing 
else  could  have  contributed  to  the  crisis.  It  was 
hard  to  confront  her  with  adversity  ;  as  hard, 
it  seemed  to  him,  as  if  she  had  been  less  cer 
tain  to  bear  it  with  cheerfulness. 

When  she  surprised  him  in  his  painful  rev 
erie  he  started  guiltily,  slipped  the  letter  into 

3 


MISS  JERRY 

his  pocket,  and  muttered  some  commonplace 
about  being  late  for  the  office.  But  she  read 
the  new  trouble  in  his  face. 


"Father,"   she  said,    "why   don't  you   tell 
me  all  about  everything?" 

"Oh,    never  mind  about  everything,  Jerry. 
Don't  bother  your  head   about   me." 

And   he  kissed   her  and   went  out. 

She  saw  the  Colorado  postmark  on  the  en 
velope  that  lay  upon  the  table. 
4 


MISS  JERRY 

"  So,"  she  thought,  "there  is  trouble  at  the 
mine,  too  !  " 

The  thought  of  trouble  did  not  daze  her. 
Her  whole  training  had  fostered  her  self-re 
liance,  strengthened  her  for  emergencies,  and 
at  the  first  signs  of  distress  which  her  father 
had  shown  some  months  before,  she  had  per 
mitted  herself  to  think  again  of  an  early  ambi 
tion  to  do  something  in  the  world  on  her 
own  account. 

Her  father  was  not  an  old  man  by  any  means, 
but  his  health  was  broken,  and  if  disaster  should 
actually  come  he  could  never  fight  the  battle  over 
again.  "  It  is  my  turn  now,"  she  thought.  There 
seemed  to  be  nothing  in  the  way  but  his  pride, 
and  she  was  confident  of  overcoming  that  ob 
stacle. 

The  thought  made  her  cheerful.  "I  will  go 
to-day,"  she  was  thinking.  "  I  will  go  and  meet 
the  world  on  a  new  footing.  And  it  will  be  bet 
ter  to  go  before  the  trouble  grows  any  worse." 

It  surprised  her  to  find  how  easily  she  had 

persuaded  herself  to  believe  that  her  resolution 

w.as  entirely  rational.     If  she  realized  the  extent 

to  which   she   was  using  the  suspicion  of  ap- 

5 


MISS  JERRY 

preaching  trouble  as  an  excuse  for  entertaining 
an  ambitious  idea,  the  suggestion  did  not  seem  to 
be  disqualifying. 

A  noise  in  the  hall  made  the  girl  turn,  and  at 
the  door  of  the  library  appeared  Kate,  the  maid, 
her  face  betraying  unmistakable  excitement. 

"There's  a  pirate  in  the  hall,  Miss  Holbrook!  " 

"A  what?" 

"A  pirate,  Miss.  Shure  he  has  long  hair,  an' 
a  great  hat,  an'  all  of  him  is  quare.  An'  it's 
yourself  he  is  askin'  for,  Miss;  but — 

"  Did  he  give  you  any  name  ?  " 

"An'  he  says,  'tell  her  Pink,'  he  says,  '  Pink,' 
an'  I  didn't  howld  the  rest  of  it,  Miss." 

"  Pink!"  cried  Geraldine.   "Not  Pink  Loper?" 

"The  same,  I  think,  Miss." 

Geraldine  was  about  to  follow  the  girl  into  the 
hall,  when  the  strange  figure  of  a  man  appeared 
at  the  door — a  man  of  wild  appearance,  suggest 
ing  the  second  heavy  villain  in  a  Western  melo 
drama,  who  lounged  in  with  a  strange  mixture 
of  assurance  and  diffidence  in  his  manner,  and 
who  drawled,  "  I  guess  this  is  Jerry." 

"Yes,  it  is!"  exclaimed  the  girl.  "And  is 
this  you,  Pink  ?"she  added,  extending  her  hand, 
6 


MISS  JERRY 

which  the  man,  to  the  distress  of  the  maid, 
grasped  fervently.  With  increased  astonish 
ment  Kate  heard  the  "pirate"  say,  "Well,  I'll 


be  hanged  if  I'd  knowed  yer,  Miss  Jerry,  you've 
got  to  be  such  a  woman!  " 

"But,  Pink,"  demanded  Geraldine,   scanning 
Pink's  buckskin  coat,  leather  breeches  and  som 
brero,   "what  on  earth  are  you  doing  in   this 
rig  ?  " 
~"Rig?"    repeated    Pink.      "Advertisin'    the 

7 


MISS  JERRY 

show,  I  guess.  Anyhow,  I  ain't  got  no  other 
hat  that's  fit  to  wear  just  about  now.  I'll  have 
t'  tell  yer  about  it.  But  shoot  me!  I  can't  git 


used  t'  this  bein'  you! — can't  hardly  believe  it!  " 
"And  you  look  so  funny,  Pink!     Worse  than 

Charley  Allen  used  to." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I  do.     But  I'm  right  in  this 

now.     I — I  suppose  y'  heard  about  my  gettin' 

married  to  Mary  ?  " 

"  Yes,  soon  after  I  went  away." 


MISS  JERRY 

"An'   y'  know   what   kind  of  a  shot   Mary 
was  ?" 

' '  Yes,  indeed.    A  much  better  shot  than  cook. " 


"  Well,  somehow  she  got  it  inter  'er  head  to 
go  inter  a  show,  and  we  got  over  to  Denver  and 
then  to  Omaha;  an'  me  an'  her  got  up  a  shoot- 
in'  act — a  regular  museum  act,  y'  know — an' 
Mary's  a  corker,  'n  no  mistake!  An'  I  can  make 
a  pretty  good  stagger  myself.  Of  course  it's 
dead  easy  at  four  or  five  yards,  but  we  chuck  a 

9 


MISS   JERRY 

great  bluff,  an'  it  goes.  Anyhow,  we  was  at 
Chicago  durin'  the  Fair,  an'  now  we're  on  the 
Bowery— down  at  the  Mammoth.  I  had  your 
address  all  the  time  from  Parker,  an'  always  in 
tended  t'  look  y'  up  if  I  ever  come  to  New 
York." 

"And  is  this  why  you  let  your  hair  grow  so 
long  ?  " 

"Sure!  An'  this  is  why  I  wear  this  hat;  an' 
this  is  why  I  wear  this  hull  business.  Great 
fake,  ain't  it?  It's  an  ad  for  the  show;  but  I 
did  feel  kinder  queer  tacklin'  your  door  bell." 

"And  does  your  wife  wear — 

"Not  much!  She's  got  a  good  fake  for  the 
show,  but  she  wouldn't  wear  nothin'  but  stylish 
clothes  on  the  street,  an'  when  she's  got  'er 
war-paint  on,  Mary's  a  peach!  She's  got  very 
high  toned  lately.  She's  a  remarkable  woman." 
Pink  paused  for  a  moment.  "  Y'  know  I'm 
called  Mortimer  on  the  bills — Mortimer  De  Mond 
— and  she's  Gracie.  Y'  know  how  it  goes — the 
De  Monds,  Gracie  and  Mortimer.  Maybe  y'  seen 
the  show,  an'  didn't  think  about  it  bein'  us  ?" 

"No,"  said  Geraldine,  "I  never  saw  your 
show." 


MISS  JERRY 

"  Y'  oughter;  its  great!  Mary  used  to  be  the 
Pearl  o'  the  Plains,  then  the  Sylph  o'  the  Sierras. 
Now  she's  the  Rose  o'  the  Rockies.  Yes,  she's  a 
remarkable  woman." 

"I  wonder  if  you  remember,  Pink,  that  Mary 
is  the  first  woman  I  ever  remember  seeing  ?  " 

"Well,  y'  got  over  it." 

"I  was  a  little  mite  of  a  girl  who  didn't  re 
member  her  mother,  and  who  had  grown  big 
enough  to  run  around  on  her  own  account,  to 
watch  the  round-ups  and  ride  a  horse — 

"  Yes,"  interrupted  Pink,  "I've  seen  yer  ride 
a  broncho  like  a  young  buck  when  yer  wasn't 
bigger'n  a  minute." 

"  And  I  had  grown  up  that  way,  seeing  plenty 
of  men  and  cattle,  but  never  a  woman,  until  one 
day  in  a  party  coming  over  the  hills  to  the  new 
camp  I  saw  a  being  in  skirts  riding  a  mule.  She 
was  a  young  woman,  dressed  in  blue  calico  and 
wearing  a  sun-bonnet;  and  I  remember  asking 
father  if  he  thought  I  would  ever  grow  up  to 
look  as  pretty  as  that.  Yes,"  pursued  Geraldine, 
as  Pink  turned  his  eyes  toward  her,  "  and  that 
was  Mary  Kimes." 

&  I  wish   I'd  got  out  of   it  as  easy  as  you 


MISS  JERRY 

did,"  said    Pink,    staring  absently  before   him. 

Geraldine    dared  to  laugh  at  him.     "Why, 

Pink,  you  don't  seem  to  be  happy  about  Mary." 


"Well,  I  ain't  altogether,"  returned  Pink, 
"that's  a  fact.  She's  too  remarkable  a  woman 
for  me.  An'  I  can  tell  yer,  Jerry,  if  I  ever  was 
bereaved,  an'  got  a  good,  square  chance  to  marry 
again,  yer  can  gamble  on  it,  I  wouldn't  take  up 
next  time  with  a  dead  shot." 

"  But  Pink,  you  are  in  no  danger  of  getting 


12 


MISS  JERRY 

shot,  are  you?"  demanded  Jerry,  with   an   ill- 
concealed  twinkle. 

"  Probably  I  ain't  ;  but  it  makes  me  nervous. 


She's  a  woman  that  kin  git  mad  quick  as  light- 
nin'  and  y'  never  kin  give  'er  any  talk." 

Jerry  said  she  remembered  something  about 
her  nearly  killing  a  man  for  saying  that  she  was 
the  worst  cook  in  Colorado. 

"That's  it;  an'  you  never  know  when  she 
might  make  a  thunderin'  big  fool  of  'erself. 
'3 


MISS  JERRY 

How's  Mr.  Holbrook  ? "  asked  Pink,  changing 
the  subject;  and  the  two  rambled  off  into  remi 
niscent  talk,  in  which  Pink  took  a  grim  delight, 
that  expressed  itself  for  the  most  part  in  an  ab 
sorbed  attention,  and  a  nervous  movement  under 
his  straggling  mustache. 

"  Pink!  "  cried  Geraldine,  in  a  burst  of  stirring 
recollection,  "do  you  remember  the  day  I  fell 
out  of  the  bucket  near  the  bottom  of  the  shaft, 
and  how  you  and  Miles  brought  me  out  ?  and 
how  the  Creeper  cried  when  he  thought  I  was 
killed  ?  And  do  you  remember  the  day  the 
English  lord  came  to  see  the  camp  and  asked 
who  I  was,  and  you  said  '  that's  the  Princess  of 
Panther  Mine  '  ?  " 

"Yes,  I  do;  an'  I  remember  the  day  that  Banks 
was  shot,  that  you  got  a  hole  in  yer  hat  for 
tryin'  t'  tell  Banks  that  Thorp  was  gunnin'  for 
Mm." 

"  I  had  almost  forgotten  that." 

"Yer  come  mighty  near  not  bein'  able  t'  re 
member  it.  But  that  wasn't  the  only  close  call 
yer  had." 

"And  of  course  you  remember  the  day  I  got 
into  a  corner  of  the  corral  and  climbed  up  there 
14 


MISS  JERRY 

to  escape  the   cattle  and  stood  there  scream 
ing— 

"  Yes,  yer  did  yell." 


"  And  calling  for  some  one  to  get  me  down, 
and  all  the  cattle  in  the  world  seeming  to  be 
jammed  right  there  ready  to  trample  me  to  death, 
and  the  Boston  man  dashing  for  me  just  in 
time  ?  And  you  remember  the  day  of  the  riot  over 
the  Webster  gang,  how  you  and  Wilkinson,  and 
father,  and  I  were  perched  above  the  cutting 

'5 


MISS  JERRY 

when  the  crowd  swept  by  within  a  few  yards  of 
us,  yelling  and  shooting  right  and  left;  and  how 
father  fell  back  with  a  bullet  in  his  shoulder, 
while  I  crouched  there  beside  him  crying  and 
holding  fast  to  that  miserable  little  dog?  And 
the  winter  before,  Pink— will  you  ever  forget 
the  great  six  days'  storm  and  the  burying  of  the 
camp  ?  " 

"  I  remember  that  every  time  I  get  on  a  large 
hunger." 

"  How  white  the  world  was  when  we  caught 
a  glimpse  of  it  !  It  all  comes  back — the  days  of 
worry,  the  gloom  of  the  men,  father's  queer  look 
of  distress  as  he  watched  me;  the  discussion  as 
to  reaching  the  other  camp,  and  my  getting  on 
the  snowshoes  and  being  lifted  up  to  start  out 
on  the  journey  with  a  long  rope  fastened  about 
my  waist.  How  delighted  and  excited  I  was! 
You  remember  the  slope  there,  Pink — just  to  the 
north  of  the  camp  ?  " 

"Yes;  an'  you  pickin'  yer  way  down  like  a 
sparrer." 

"  I  was  so  light,  you  see,  that  I  could  go  where 
none  of  you  dared  venture;  and  you  were  all 
watching  as  long  as  you  possibly  could  until  I 
16 


MISS  JERRY 

had  scrambled  slowly  along  over  the  slope  and 
had  gone  down  beyond  the  low  ridge — right 
over  there " 


"  Yes,  I  know,  like  I  was  lookin'  at  it  now." 
"And  then  father  tugged  at  the  line  because 
he  was  afraid  I  had  gone  through  the  crust  of  the 
snow  until  I  came  in  sight  again  screaming  to 
him  to  let  me  go ;  and  they  gave  me  more  rope, 
until — 

^'  Until  yer  brought  back  word  from  the  other 
'7 


MISS  JERRY 

camp,  the  best  news  that  a  crowd  of  men  with  a 
lonesome  feelin'  inside  ever  got  on  the  face  of 
this  earth." 

The  talk  was  interrupted  by  the  street  door 
bell,  and  the  appearance  of  a  young  woman  who 
came  in  with  the  air  of  a  person  who  is  a  fre 
quent  caller,  and  who  did  not  disguise  her  aston 
ishment  at  the  presence  of  the  other  visitor. 

Pink  acknowledged  the  introduction  with  his 
best  bow,  and  said  "  that  he  must  go  now,  and 
that  he  would  come  in  again." 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you,  Pink,"  said  Geral- 
dine  in  parting,  ' '  and  bring  Mrs.  Loper  with  you. " 

Mrs.  Remsen-Holt  heard  the  explanation  with 
an  expression  of  countenance  indicating  that  if 
she  had  been  surprised  she  might  have  known 
better.  "It's  just  like  you,  Jerry,"  she  said; 
"and  it's  a  wonder  to  me  after  all  that  fuzzy 
Western  life  of  yours,  that  you  haven't  been 
visited  by  more  desperadoes  and  rough  riders  of 
the  rocky  road." 

"It  was  a  real  delight  to  meet  Pink  again," 

Geraldine  said.     "  I  wouldn't  have  missed  him 

for  anything.     And  besides,  Pink  isn't  so  very 

wild.     His  long  hair  is  for   revenue   only,   and 

18 


MISS  JERRY 

I  assure  you  that  he  is  as  good-hearted  as  his 
hair  is  long." 

"I  just  ran  in,"  resumed  Mrs.  Holt,  "  to  tell 
you  that  we  are  organizing  a  Municipal  Govern 
ment  Club,  and  that  — 

"  Another  club  ?  " 

"Yes,  an  afternoon  club,  you  know;  and  we 
are  going  to  study  taxation,  and  street  cleaning, 
and  primaries;  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  has  promised 
to  speak  at  the  first  regular  meeting.  Everybody 
is  flighted.  It  will  be  a  great  success  ;  and  it's 
never  been  done,  you  know." 

"  And  to  think,"  sighed  Jerry,  tragically,  "  that 
I  had  hoped  so  confidently  to  save  you  !  Mrs. 
Holt,  this  is  simply  debauchery  !  " 

"Jerry  !  you  are  so  amusing." 

"All  the  same,  Mrs.  Holt,  I  look  upon  you  as 
a  pitiable  victim  of  the  club  habit.  It's  an  awful 
appetite  when  once  it  fastens  itself  upon  you. 
You  start  in  with  one  or  two  clubs  a  week  ;  then 
you  have  to  take  one  every  day,  and  after  a  while 
two  a  day  is  the  least  you  can  get  along  with. 
If  I  weren't  on  my  way  out  now  — 


"Jerry  !  will  you  stop  and  listen  ?" 

"No,  I  mus'n't,  Mrs.   Holt.       I've  reformed. 


'9 


MISS  JERRY 

I  don't  think  I  was  born  for  the  frivolous  life  1 
have  been  trying  to  lead  here  in  New  York.  1 
like  to  frivol,  too;  it  would  be  lots  of  fun  to 
study  municipal  government,  but  1  must  get 
down  to  something  serious." 

Mrs.  Holt  smiled.  "  The  idea  of  your  settling 
down  is  really  droll,  Jerry.  I  should  be  very 
sorry  to  see  you  become  sedate;  and  you  have 
seemed  a  bit  serious  lately — for  you.  The  Mu 
nicipal  Government  Club  is  just  what  you  need 
to  brighten  you  up.  I  never  forgot  what  my 
first  club  did  for  me.  You  know  I  was  fretful 
and  peevish,  and  complained  so  much,  that  Papa 
said :  '  Fanny,  you'll  have  to  either  get  married 
or  keep  a  diary.'  But  I  didn't  do  either.  I  just 
joined  a  club,  and  it  simply  saved  me.  Of  course 
when  I  did  get  married,  clubs  became  an  abso 
lute  necessity." 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  Jerry;  "but  I  think  I  shall 
worry  along  with  my  eight  or  ten  until  I  have 
your  better  excuse.  Which  way  are  you  go 
ing?" 

Mrs.  Holt  was  too  busy  a  woman  now-a-days 
to  waste  words  in  such  a  matter.  "  But  I  shan't 
let  you  bury  yourself,"  she  said,  as  they  went  out. 


MISS  JERRY 

A  few  minutes  later  Jerry  was  on  an  elevated 
train  scurrying  in  the  direction  of  the  City  Hall. 
The  plan  which  had  formed  itself  in  her  mind 
had  begun  to  seem  like  a  very  daring  one.  As 
that  plan  included  an  undertaking  on  her  own 
account,  without  any  advice  or  assistance,  it  was 
one  that  had  a  natural  fascination  for  a  girl  of  her 
training. 

As  she  crossed  City  Hall  Park  it  occurred  to 
her  that  people  who  might  hear  of  it  would  be 
inclined  to  say  that  it  was  just  like  Jerry  Holbrook 
— a  thought  that  both  amused  her  and  urged  her 
to  hope  that  it  might  not  turn  out  awkwardly 
altogether.  It  was  an  entirely  creditable  thing, 
she  had  thought,  to  determine  to  enter  journal 
ism,  and  to  do  so  without  letter  of  introduction, 
or  any  other  influence  of  the  kind.  But  she  had 
felt  much  more  comfortable  going  down  the 
Panther  Mine  in  a  bucket  than  going  up  the  Dy 
namo  Building  in  an  elevator  ;  and  when  she 
had  advanced  so  far  as  one  of  those  paradoxical 
doors  that  tell  you  the  entrance  is  somewhere 
else,  she  began  to  feel  a  little  sorry  that  her 
scheme  had  made  it  absolutely  necessary  for  her 
to-go  alone.  For  a  moment  she  thought  of  turn- 


MISS  JERRY 

ing  and  catching  the  elevator  on  its  way  down ; 
in  another  she  had  opened  the  right  door. 

The  guardian  of  the  right  door  was  one  of  those 
boys  that  bloom  in  newspaper  offices  and  no 
where  else  on  the  surface  of  the  globe;  a  boy 
precociously  versed  in  the  ways  of  the  world, 
equally  familiar  with  the  tariff  and  the  prize-ring, 
tingling  with  the  latest  impulses  of  the  English 
language,  and  terrible  in  his  superhuman  self- 
possession;  a  boy  to  admire  and  to  fear;  a  boy 
who  inspires  a  liking  without  affection,  yet  whom 
no  one  likes  any  less  because  of  an  occasional 
yearning  to  kick  him  down  stairs. 

When  Miss  Jerry  came  in  the  boy  asked  her, 
without  looking  up,  whom  she  wished  to  see. 
Of  course  Jerry  didn't  know  whom  she  wished 
to  see,  and  the  boy  didn't  appear  to  be  listening 
when  she  explained  her  errand  as  awkwardly  as 
people  do  when  challenged  to  explain  anything 
to  a  remorseless  boy ;  but  he  said  at  last  that  he 
guessed  she  had  better  see  Mr.  Hamilton,  the 
City  Editor,  anyway. 

The  City  Editor  was  a  younger  man  than  Jerry 
had  expected  to  see.  She  had  met  young  re 
porters,  but  had  always  fancied  an  editor  as  a 


MISS  JERRY 

man  who  had  grown  old  enough  to  be  tired  of 
knocking  round  out-of-doors. 
This  City  Editor  was  young,  but  if  he  had  been 


eighty-three  he  could  not  have  waited  with  more 
severe  repose  for  Jerry  to  begin,  or  have  pre 
pared  a  more  judicial  countenance  while  she 
explained,  clumsily  and  haltingly,  that  she  wanted 
to  be  a  newspaper  writer. 

When  she  anticipated  his  question  and  said 
that  she   had   never  written  a  line  for  a  daily 
23 


MISS  JERRY 

newspaper  in  her  life,  she  fancied  that  she  saw  a 
twinkle  of  amusement  in  the  City  Editor's  eyes, 
and  the  suspicion  did  not  please  her  at  all. 
When  he  asked  her  bluntly  what  sort  of  work 
she  thought  of  doing,  she  began  to  wonder 
whether  he  was  not  a  brute,  young  as  he  was. 
"I  am  willing  to  write  about  anything,"  she 
said,  catching  again  the  irritating  glimmer  of  a 
smile,  "I  am  willing  to  write  about  anything 
but  society." 

The  City  Editor  looked  as  if  he  did  not  think 
any  less  of  her  for  this  prejudice.  "And  I  am 
so  tired  of  reading  about  women,"  Jerry  added, 
"that  I  would  rather  not  write  about  them  in 
particular; — you  know  what  I  mean." 

' '  Oh,  yes, "  said  the  City  Editor,  ' '  I  know  what 
you  mean."  And  then  he  undertook  to  tell  her 
that  general  newspaper  writing  required  con 
siderable  experience,  that  the  rough  and  tumble 
of  reporting  and  the  preparation  of  special  stories 
was  not  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  that  a  young 
girl  was  usually  fitted  for. 

"  But  you  have  women  reporters,"  she  urged. 

This  he  admitted,  adding  that  some  of  them 
had  rather  a  hard  time  of  it. 
24 


MISS  JERRY 

"But  I  am  not  afraid  of  anybody,"  she  de 
clared;  and  the  City  Editor  laughed  outright. 
"Perhaps  not  in  the  daytime,"  he  said.  "But 
think  of  the  night.  One  of  our  women  writers 
has  just  been  going  through  the  police  lodging- 
houses  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  How 
would  you  like  that?" 

"I  wouldn't  like  it,"  said  Jerry  quietly,  "but 
I  would  go  if  I  had  to. " 

At  this  the  City  Editor  leaned  back  in  his  chair 
again.  "  You  are  hard  to  frighten." 

"Oh,  please  don't  try 'to  frighten  me,"  Jerry 
said,  "for  I  am  sure  I  should  wear  out  your 
patience.  I  simply  can 't  get  frightened.  I  feel 
quite  ashamed  of  myself." 

The  City  Editor  laughed  again.  "  I  shan't  try 
any  more,"  he  said.  Then  he  attempted  to  be 
solemn  again,  and  not  to  notice  how  pretty  she 
was,  and  to  remember,  and  to  comment  upon 
the  fact,  that  there  was  no  position  open  on  the 
staff;  but  his  speech  didn't  go  very  well.  It 
ended  by  his  suggesting  that  she  try  her  hand  at 
some  practical  form  of  writing  and  submit  it. 
"You  might  write  a  special  story  for  the  Sunday 
paper." 

25 


MISS  JERRY 

Perhaps  because  he  regarded  the  talk  as  prac 
tically  at  an  end,  or  because  he  wished  to  soften 
the  edge  of  his  not  altogether  symmetrical  sever 
ity,  the  City  Editor  caught  up  a  scrap  of  paper 
from  his  desk  and  said,  lightly,  "  You  will  under 
stand,  now,  that  if  you  were  an  old  hand — and  a 
man — I  might  have  had  to  send  you  up  to  inter 
view  this  fellow  Ward,  the  mining  genius,  who 
is  just  on  from  Colorado.  But — 

"Colorado!"  cried  Jerry,  "and  the  mines! 
Why  I  grew  up  in  a  Colorado  mine!  I  know 
mines  better  than — than  anything  else  in  the 
world!  I  wish  you  happened  to  think  that  I 
might  go  to  this  mining  genius.  Suppose — 

The  City  Editor  despised  his  own  weakness, 
but  he  permitted  himself  to  listen,  and  to  believe 
that  this  was  not  entirely  absurd  under  the  cir 
cumstances.  His  firmness  was  the  more  shaken 
when  he  had  permitted  himself  to  ask  something 
about  Jerry's  Western  life.  He  was  seized  by  an 
unprofessional  curiosity  to  see  what  such  a  girl 
would  make  of  such  a  situation,  and  even  per 
suaded  himself  that  the  result  might  be  distinctly 
interesting.  Then  he  actually  set  about  planning 
the  interview  which  she  was  to  undertake. 
26 


MISS  JERRY 

"I  don't  suppose,"  she  said,  "that  there  is  any 
other  way  except  to  go  right  to  the  hotel." 
"No,  I  think  not,"  replied  Hamilton,  search 


ing  her  face  for  some  sign  of  dismay  at  this; 
"and  we  must  have  it  for  to-morrow  morning's 
paper  if  he  is  in  town.  Ward  has  made  a  great 
hit  by  the  introduction  of  some  new  machinery, 
and  if  I  mistake  not,  he  is  on  here  to  arrange  some 
big  mining  scheme.  There  is  a  good  story  there 
i£you  can  get  him  to  talk." 
27 


MISS  JERRY 

"Get  him  to  talk!"  The  words  echoed 
strangely  in  Jerry's  thoughts  as  she  went  down 
in  the  elevator  and  across  City  Hall  Park;  and 
that  afternoon  when  this  young  woman  who 
was  not  afraid  of  anybody  asked  at  the  desk  of 
the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  for  Mr.  J.  Sylvester  Ward, 
her  heart  was  thumping  in  a  disgraceful  way. 

It  so  happened,  however,  that  Mr.  J.  Sylvester 
Ward  was  out  of  town,  and  Jerry  left  the  corri 
dor  glad  and  sorry  that  the  case  stood  that  way ; 
sorry  that  there  should  be  some  doubt  as  to  get 
ting  the  interview;  glad  that  she  should  have  a 
little  longer  time  for  preparation. 

When  she  came  to  think  the  thing  over  at 
home,  she  could  not  decide  that  she  really  had 
been  rash.  If  she  was  to  go  into  journalism  she 
meant  to  go  by  the  rough  road  of  the  ordinary 
beginner.  Going  to  interview  a  strange  man  at 
a  big  hotel  certainly  was  a  rough  piece  of  road. 
It  was  not  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  she  would 
have  picked  out  to  begin  on,  but  it  was  the 
chance  that  came  to  hand,  and  if  the  awkward 
ness  arose  chiefly  from  the  fact  that  she  was  a 
woman,  she  resented  the  awkwardness  all  the 
more  on  that  account. 

28 


MISS  JERRY 

When  she  asked  her  father  that  afternoon  if  he 
remembered  that  this  was  the  night  of  the  Dyck- 
man  ball,  he  looked  so  distressed  for  a  moment 
that  she  was  tempted  to  throw  over  the  whole 
question  of  going  to  the  ball;  but  she  knew  that 
it  could  not  be  best  for  him  to  stay  at  home. 
Even  if  there  had  to  be  some  changes  in  their 
attitude  toward  social  life  as  they  had  permitted 
themselves  to  know  that  life,  it  would  be  better 
for  him  that  the  break  should  not  come  any 
sooner  than  the  need. 

"I  see  that  you  want  me  to  go,"  Holbrook 
said,  looking  down  at  her  in  the  quiet  way  that 
had  come  over  him. 

"Yes,  I  want  you  to  go,  Dick,"  she  replied, 
using  the  name  he  permitted  her  to  make  a 
whimsical  use  of.  "I'm  not  going  to  let  you 
stay  around  and  mope." 

"  Have  I  been  moping?"  he  asked,  seriously. 

"No,  Dick;  but  I  don't  want  you  to  begin. 
And  I  warn  you  that  at  the  first  signs  of  worry  I 
shall  sentence  you  to  the  giddiest  orgies  I  can 
find." 

And  so  father  and  daughter  went  to  the  Dyck- 
man  ball  that  night. 

29 


MISS  JERRY 

The  Dyckmans  were  not  exactly  society  peo 
ple,  but  their  entertainments  were  excellent  in 
quality,  being  neither  lavish  nor  meagre,  of  the 
sort  that  draw  out  representatives  of  both  the 
older  and  the  younger  sets,  and  where,  as  Perry 
said,  they  served  suppers  at  which  you  could 
actually  get  something  to  eat. 

Dyckman  himself  was  a  little  man  with  a  large, 
red  smile,  who  had  made  considerable  money  in 
Harlem  real  estate.  He  was  a  thin  little  man — 
so  thin  that,  as  Perry  said,  his  full-dress  suit  was 
only  half  full.  Utterly  incapable  of  the  social 
graces,  he  delighted  in  the  popularity  of  his  wife, 
an  amiable  and  ambitious  woman  of  substantial 
person. 

The  gathering  at  the  Dyckman's  on  this  occa 
sion  was  one  of  those  at  which  everyone  meets 
precisely  the  people  he  expects  to  meet,  and  at 
which  everyone  appears  to  derive  a  species  of 
satisfaction  from  this  circumstance.  Altogether 
it  was  an  interesting  company.  There  was  a 
proper  representation  of  the  younger  set — Bar- 
rington  and  his  bride,  Eddie  Van  Cowen,  the 
Sibley  girls,  who  were  playfully  spoken  of  as  the 
Westchester  twins,  and  some  eminently  solid 
30 


MISS  JERRY 

people  from  Washington  Heights.  The  Lexing 
ton  brothers,  who  had  recently  fallen  heirs  to  the 
great  Gibraltar  apartment  houses,  were  conspic 
uously  present.  Perry,  who  was  always  saying 
mean  things,  applied  to  them  the  label  of  the  Gib 
raltar  Flats.  There  was  little  Milkworth,  a  sadly 
uninteresting  type  of  young  man — too  young  to 
have  a  past,  too  stupid  to  have  a  future  ;  and 
Mrs.  Caswell,  who  had  the  reputation  of  being 
the  crudest  of  all  the  rich  widows  in  New  York. 
Three  or  four  men  were  always  certain  to  be 
found  hovering  around  Dorothy  Walsh,  who  dis 
played  great  precocity  in  dividing  her  attention 
and  her  conversation  into  microscopic  fragments. 

Mrs.  Remsen-Holt  brought  an  English  critic 
who  was  studying  American  society  and  politics 
on  a  six  weeks' trip;  who  took  the  Municipal 
Government  Club  seriously,  and  who  was  always 
asking  whether  this,  that  and  the  other  thing 
were  "characteristic,  you  know."  Mrs.  Holt  had 
studied  with  great  labor  the  English  angular 
handwriting,  and  she  enjoyed  keenly  the  English 
critic's  delightfully  angular  enunciation. 

Then  there  was  old  Prattsby,  over  sixty, 
brat  notoriously  willing  to  dance,  a  frivolity 
3' 


MISS  JERRY 

which  his  daughter  regarded  as  entirely  incon 
gruous  in  a  gentleman  of  his  years.  But  Miss 
Prattsby  took  life  very  seriously.  She  had  reached 
an  age  when  it  was  awkward  to  remember  the 
introduction  of  telephones,  rash  to  remember 
Black  Friday,  and  positively  indecent  to  remem 
ber  the  War.  She  was  a  sort  of  feminine  Diog 
enes  who  went  about  with  the  lamp  of  higher 
education,  sadly  searching  for  an  honest  man. 

Miss  Jerry,  who  came  in  a  charming  ball-gown 
that  once  had  robed  her  stately  great-grand 
mother,  had  been  presented  to  the  English  critic 
and  was  listening  to  his  queries  and  comments, 
when  Mrs.  Dyckman  came  up  with  her  cousin, 
Mr.  Ward,  of  Colorado. 

Jerry,  perhaps,  visibly  started  at  the  name. 

"You  are  not  Mr.  J.  Sylvester  Ward?"  she 
asked  in  her  direct  way. 

"Oh,  yes  I  am  !  "  replied  Ward,  with  a  free 
laugh,  "unless  you  like  James  S.  Ward  better." 

"  I  happened  to  hear  your  name  mentioned  to 
day,"  said  Jerry.  If  Ward  wondered  why  she 
flushed  he  did  not  lament  the  effect.  "And  this," 
Jerry  was  thinking,  with  a  confused  sensation, 
"this  is  the  man  1  was  sent  to  interview  !  " 
32 


MISS  JERRY 


"I  have  just  been  talking  to  your  father," 
Ward  was  saying  a  few  minutes  later,  "and 
telling  him  that  I  had  heard  both  of  him  and  of 


you  from  the  people  out  there  at  Long  Creek." 
Jerry  hoped  that  the  reports  were  not  entirely 

unfavorable. 

"On  the  contrary,"  returned  Ward,  "people 

in  that  part  of  the  country  bank  high  on  your 

father,  and  I  received  the  impression  that  you 

were  a  kind  of  Bret  Harte  heroine." 
33 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  laughed.  "That  is  a  very  indefinite  de 
scription.  I  shouldn't  know  how  to  live  up  to 
it" 

"I'm  glad,"  pursued  Ward,  "to  get  over  here 
out  of  the  crowd.  The  crush  of  people  worries 
me.  Of  course  you  know  I  haven't  done  much 
of  this  society  sort  of  thing  for  nearly  a  dozen 
years,  and  I  feel  like  a  cat  in  Leadville — the  at 
mosphere  is  too  rare  for  me." 

"I've  become  accustomed  to  it,"  Jerry  said — 
"I  mean  to  society;  but  for  a  long  time  I  was 
homesick  for  the  camps.  I  still  wish  at  times 
for  a  wild  ride,  for  the  swing  in  the  shaft,  for  the 
roaring  song  of  the  men.  And  sometimes  when 
I  find  myself  in  a  polite  drawing-room  dance  I 
wonder  what  would  happen  if  I  should  break 
into  a  regular  mining  jig  before  the  whole  com 
pany." 

"I  came  from  Philadelphia  to-night,"  said 
Ward,  with  an  unreadable  smile,  "but  I  would 
travel  a  much  greater  distance  to  see  you  do 
that." 

"  It  is  not  likely  to  happen.  You  see  the  in 
fluence  of  heredity.  I  was  born  here  in  the  East, 
of  Eastern  parents,  and  it  is  quite  natural,  I  sup- 
34 


MISS  JERRY 

pose,  that  I  should  relapse  under  the  first  favoring 
conditions  and  become  tame  again." 

"It  is  too  bad,"  assented  Ward,  affecting  to 
feel  depressed  by  the  thought;  "but  are  you 
really  entirely  tame?" 

"  Oh,  no!  At  least  my  friends  seem  to  regard 
me  sometimes  as  not  quite  perfectly  manageable." 

He  thought  this  was  hopeful.  "And  I  sup 
pose,"  he  added,  "that  is  what  my  cousin  meant 
just  now  when  she  spoke  of  you  as  delightfully 
original." 

"  Did  that  excite  your  curiosity?" 

"No — my  reverence." 

Presently  Ward  was  talking  about  his  electric 
drills,  his  mining  schemes  and  the  chances  of 
silver  working  in  view  of  the  Repeal  Bill.  "Of 
course,"  he  remarked  some  minutes  later,  "we 
are  keeping  very  quiet  about  the  combine  just 
now." 

"  And  yet  you  are  telling  me  all  about  it." 

"Oh,  well,  you  know  what  I  mean  ;  we  are 
keeping  it  out  of  the  papers." 

"  I  see,"  said  Jerry  reflectively. 

"And  besides,  you  are  a  privileged  person; 
-you  belong  to  the  mining  fraternity,  and  if  I  mis- 
35 


MISS  JERRY 

take  not,  your  father  will  be  interested  in  this 
thing." 

' '  Aren't  you  trying  to  justify  yourself  for  telling 


me  something  that  you  shouldn't  have  told  ?  " 
"Well,  I'm  open  to  conviction  as  to  whether 

my  confidence  has  been  misplaced." 
They  were  both  laughing  at  this  when  Fred 

Prentiss  came  hurrying  up.     "Miss  Holbrook! 

I've  been  hunting  for  you  everywhere.     They're 

dancing,  and  this  is  my  waltz." 
36 


MISS  JERRY 

Ward  did  not  look  as  if  he  were  at  all  grate 
ful  to  Prentiss.  As  Jerry  disappeared  with  the 
younger  man  he  remembered  that  he  had  prom 
ised  his  cousin  that  he  would  ask  Miss  Olivia  to 
dance. 

The  incident  will  explain  the  frame  of  mind  in 
which  Miss  Geraldine  Holbrook  found  herself  on 
the  following  day.  Unless  she  abandoned  her 
commission  from  the  Dynamo,  and  thus  confessed 
defeat  at  the  very  threshold  of  her  undertaking, 
she  was  obliged  to  confront  a  somewhat  awk 
ward  situation  with  Mr.  J.  Sylvester  Ward.  In 
the  little  talk  at  Mrs.  Dyckman's,  Ward  had  told 
her  everything,  or  very  nearly  everything,  she 
needed  to  know  for  the  purposes  of  her  news 
paper  article.  It  struck  her  as  whimsical  that 
she  should  have  been  placed  in  possession  of 
the  wished  for  information  in  circumstances  so 
peculiar.  To  go  to  Ward,  confess  her  ambi 
tions,  and  appeal  to  him  from  the  professional 
standpoint  for  permission  to  make  use  of  the  in 
formation  he  had  given  to  her,  or  so  much  as  it 
might  be  proper  to  publish,  seemed  more  awk 
ward  than  the  original  undertaking.  It  would 
be  confessing  the  whole  scheme  to  the  Dyck- 
37 


MISS  JERRY 

mans,  as  well  as  taking  a  comparative  stranger 
into  the  secret. 

Yet  it  was  not  impossible  to  take  Ward  into  the 
secret.  The  matter  was  wholly  one  of  business, 
and  Ward,  as  a  man  of  business,  would  respect  an 
application  made  in  that  spirit  Looking  at  the 
matter  practically,  she  thought  it  was  a  pity  that 
she  could  not  have  made  an  appointment  at  the 
ball  to  meet  him  somewhere  on  the  following 
day.  That  would  have  been  no  more  novel  than 
anything  else  about  the  affair. 

If  she  could  have  done  this  she  would  have 
been  saved  the  disappointment  of  going  again  to 
the  hotel  to  find  that  Ward  was  not  in.  She 
now  began  to  feel  uncomfortable  at  the  thought 
that  the  City  Editor  would  have  abandoned  all 
thought  of  seeing  her  again.  He  would  have 
decided  that  she  had  failed  to  meet  the  test. 
The  thought  was  exceedingly  unpleasant.  In 
the  afternoon  she  again  was  starting  to  go  up 
town  when  she  met  Mr.  Ward  at  her  own  door. 

He  had  missed  her  father  at  the  office,  and  to 
lose  no  time  had  called  to  discuss  a  very  impor 
tant  business  matter.  At  least,  this  was  his  ex 
planation.  After  hearing  this,  Jerry  abruptly  con- 
38 


MISS  JERRY 

fessed  to  him  her  whole  enterprise.     "I  throw 
myself  on  the  mercy  of  the  court, "  she  concluded. 

"I  understand,"  said  Ward,  evidently  not  at 
all  embarrassed  by  the  situation.  "  You  want 
me  to  keep  your  secret,  but  you  don't  want  to 
keep  mine.  You  want  to  publish  my  secret  to 
the  world.  Now,  do  you  think  that's  quite  fair  ?  " 

"Oh,  but  I  don't  want  to  publish  all  of  yours 
—just  some  of  it,  you  know." 

"  Will  you  let  me  off  on  the  syndicate  scheme 
and  the  compound  drills  ?  " 

"  If  you  will  tell  me  everything  else  that's  in 
teresting,  and  let  me  make  notes  right  away." 

Jerry  found  paper  and  pencil  and  settled  at  the 
library  table,  Ward  regarding  her  with  a  kind  of 
quizzical  seriousness  as  she  bent  herself  with 
great  enthusiasm  to  the  taking  of  notes. 

"Don't  you  want  me  to  sharpen  your  pen 
cil  ?"  he  asked,  after  she  had  begun.  "  You  see 
you  will  have  to  read  this  afterward." 

The  point  broke  twice  while  he  was  perform 
ing  this  delicate  service.     "Of  course,"  he  said, 
"  I  always  sharpen  the  reporter's  pencil  when  I 
am  being  interviewed,  and  I  don't  wish  to  dis 
criminate  against  you." 

39 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  ventured  one  or  two  questions  during  the 
process. 

"You  had  better  wait,"  said  Ward,  "or  I 
shall  break  this  again;  and  you  won't  remember 
it  all,  anyway." 

"  I  wonder,"  she  said,  "if  you  will  remember 
all  thatyou  say,  and  stand  by  it,  and  not  quarrel 
with  the  paper  afterward  because  you  don't  like 
the  looks  of  it  in  print  ?" 

"  But  that  would  include  quarreling  with  you, 
wouldn't  it  ?  " 

"  O,  certainly!  you  would  have  to  quarrel 
with  me  first." 

"  I'm  not  afraid  of  the  paper,  but  I  should  be 
afraid  to  quarrel  with  you.  You  look  like  a  win 
ner,"  said  Ward,  watching  her  narrowly  as  she 
resumed  her  work. 

"You  see,"  Jerry  said  presently,  after  an  in 
dustrious  period  of  writing  and  questioning,  "I 
can  fill  in  the  narrative  with  a  good  many  facts 
about  mining  that  I  myself  know." 

"  O,  yes! "  assented  Ward,  "that's  the  right 
way.  All  the  reporters  do  that.  I've  had  them 
supply  so  much  that  afterward  I  couldn't  see 
where  I  came  in." 

40 


MISS  JERRY 

"  But  there  will  be  plenty  of  you  in  this,"  sug 
gested  Jerry,  "The  City  Editor  was  right.  He 
said  he  knew  this  would  make  a  good  story  if  I 
could  get  you  to  talk." 

"Get  me  to  talk  !  And  you  did  get  me  to 
talk,  didn't  you  ?  " 

Jerry  laughed  over  her  notes.  "  I  had  no  idea 
it  was  so  easy.  I  believe  I  should  like  inter 
views — if  I  could  get  people  to  come  here  to  the 
house  like  this." 

"Probably  a  large  number  would  be  willing," 
suggested  Ward,  "  if  they— 

"Oh,  dear  !"  cried  Jerry,  "I  can't  make  out 
this  word.  What  did  you  say  was  the  name  of 
those  little  jiggers  on  the  side  of  the  machine  ?  " 

"  Eccentrics.  Are  you  sure  there  are  not  some 
other  words  there  that  will  bother  you  ?  " 

"Yes."  Jerry  was  examining  the  notes. 
"They  are  my  first  attempt,  but  I  really  think  I 
can  read  them." 

Just  here  there  was  a  step  in  the  hall,  and  Mr. 
Holbrook  appeared  in  the  doorway. 

"  Ah,  Mr.  Holbrook  !  "  exclaimed  Ward,  "be 
hold  me  in  the  act  of  being  interviewed  !  "  Then 
•catching  Jerry's  frightened  glance,  he  added: 
41 


MISS  JERRY 

"Your  interesting  daughter  here  has  been  kind 
enough  to  entertain  me  by  listening  to  yarns 
about  the  mines.  She  is  a  sympathetic  listener. 
It's  a  novelty  to  find  a  woman  who  knows  so 
much  about  the  subject." 

"  Yes/'  said  Holbrook,  unsuspiciously,  "Jerry 
always  did  know  mines  better  than  her  arith 
metic. " 

Leaving  the  two  men  together  Jerry  hurried 
down-town  to  explain  matters  to  her  editor. 

Her  editor  did  not  seem  especially  cordial  at 
the  outset  ;  but  when  she  had  explained  that 
Ward  had  been  out  of  town  until  late  in  the 
evening,  and  that  this  was  why  she  had  not  re 
turned  on  the  same  day  as  instructions  and  good 
journalism  demanded,  his  interest  appeared  to 
revive.  He  found  a  seat  for  her  at  a  table  near 
his  desk  and  asked  her  to  write  out  her  story  at 
once. 

It  was  then  half-past  three.  There  was  con 
siderable  noise  in  the  office,  and  a  continual  hum 
from  the  hustling  streets  below.  The  newsboys 
were  shouting  the  afternoon  "extras." 

The  first  paragraph  in  her  article  occupied 
Jerry  for  just  forty  minutes.  Fortunately,  the 
42 


MISS  JERRY 

writing  came  a  little  easier  after  that.  She  grew 
somewhat  accustomed  to  the  noises,  to  the  mov 
ing  of  feet,  the  jingling  of  electric  bells,  the  frag 
ments  of  conversation,  the  clicking  of  a  typewriter 
that  seemed  to  be  playing  in  rivalry  to  the  finer 
staccato  of  the  telegraph  instrument. 

As  the  afternoon  waned,  Hamilton  came  over 
and  turned  the  button  of  the  electric  lamp,  re 
marking,  tritely,  that  there  was  no  extra  charge 
for  illumination.  The  mellow  radiance  of  the 
lamp  gave  a  special  charm  to  the  work,  which 
now  began  to  seem  very  professional.  But  it 
also  gave  a  hint  of  approaching  night  and  the 
dinner-hour  at  home. 

When  she  had  begun  to  wonder  if  it  wasn't 
nearly  midnight,  the  article  was  finished ;  that  is 
to  say,  there  was  nothing  more  that  she  could 
do  with  it;  and  when  the  last  page  was  written, 
and  after  looking  it  over,  with  many  mis 
givings,  she  surrendered  it  to  Hamilton,  who 
evidently  had  been  watching  her.  He  asked  her 
to  wait  while  he  looked  it  over,  and  she  asked 
whether  she  might  not  sit  near  while  he  cor 
rected  it.  And  so  she  took  a  seat  beside  him, 
-and  saw  him  blot  out,  interline  and  otherwise 
43 


MISS  JERRY 

disfigure  her  pages  with  a  blue  pencil.  It  was 
worse  than  holding  out  one's  hand  for  a  surgical 
operation;  and  Hamilton  never  displayed  a  sign 
of  any  feeling  in  the  matter,  or  any  indication 
that  there  was  anything  unusual  in  the  affair. 
Here  and  there  he  simply  said,  "  We  don't  put 
it  that  way,"  or,  "This  is  not  exactly  in  the 
newspaper  manner."  When  he  had  made  poor 
Jerry's  manuscript  look  like  a  dress-pattern  sup 
plement,  had  written  a  heading  and  sent  the 
manuscript  away  by  a  boy,  he  helped  Jerry  with 
her  wraps  and  found  his  own  hat  and  coat. 

"  If  you  don't  mind,"  he  said,  "  I  will  see  you 
to  the  car." 

"Thank  you,"  she  returned,  "but  I  hope  you 
won't  disturb  yourself.  It's  very  early  in  the 
evening,  and  it's  not  at  all  necessary." 

"  I  am  going  up-town  anyhow,"  he  said,  with 
something  of  both  deference  and  insistence.  "  I 
hope  you  will  give  me  the  pleasure.  I  am 
through  for  the  day." 

He  did  not  tell  her  that  the  Night  Editor  had 
relieved  him  over  an  hour  before. 

"  Of  course,  by-and-by,"  he  added,  as  they 
stopped  before  the  elevator,  "you  probably  will 

44 


MISS  JERRY 

scorn  an  escort,  but  you're  not  yet  thoroughly 
initiated.  And  besides,  I  don't  see  how  you  can 
prevent  the  editor  from  walking  out  along  with 
you  if  he  wants  to." 

When  Jerry  sat  alone  that  night  and  surveyed 
the  progress  of  her  adventure,  the  incidents  of 
the  afternoon  began  to  seem  more  novel  than 
they  had  seemed  in  the  progress  of  their  happen 
ing.  Incidentally,  she  concluded  that  Hamilton 
was  not  a  brute.  There  was  something  cool  and 
decisive  about  him  that  made  her  wonder  whether 
he  might  not  know  how  to  be  disagreeable,  but 
his  courtesy  had  the  charm  of  growing  in  quality 
as  one  thought  about  it. 

Early  the  next  morning  Jerry  seized  the 
"  Dynamo  "  and  read  her  interview  in  that  glow 
of  interest  with  which  the  young  writer  fon 
dles  the  first  progeny  of  the  pen.  All  the  machin 
ery  had  disappeared — especially  the  blue  pencil- 
marks.  From  the  erased  and  patched  and 
seemingly  muddled  lines  had  emerged  the 
smooth  and  authoritative  print.  And,  after  all, 
those  blue  pencil  corrections  had  looked  more 
frequent  and  violent  than  they  really  were.  The 
story  seemed  to  be  much  as  she  had  written  it. 

45 


MISS  JERRY 

And  now  that  the  thing  was  done,  came  the 
reckoning.  There  was  no  reason  why  she  should 
prolong  the  secrecy,  now  that  she  had  demon 
strated  that  she  could  do  something.  She  had 
wished  to  show  that  she  could  do  that  which  she 
had  done.  Not  that  this  was  very  much,  but 
by  doing  that  which  she  had  done  she  expected 
to  inspire  her  father's  confidence  in  her  ability  to 
face  the  world.  As  it  turned  out,  facing  the 
world  had  not,  in  this  particular  instance,  proved 
so  very  serious  or  difficult  a  matter.  Everything 
had  favored  her.  Yet  she  had  faced  all  that  the 
circumstances  demanded,  and  had  not  asked 
that  anything  be  made  smooth. 

When  she  handed  the  paper  to  her  father  she 
slipped  her  arm  round  him  and  said,  "  Dick,  I've 
been  running  off  again."  It  was  the  confession 
that  she  used  to  make  when,  as  a  child,  she  had 
gone  farther  from  the  camp  than  he  had  permit 
ted.  He  looked  at  her  and  at  the  newspaper, 
and  then  he  sat  down,  and  she  told  him  all 
about  it. 

"And  did  you  think  that  affairs  were  so  bad 
— so  bad  as  to  need  this?"  he  asked  her  in  a 
tone  that  betrayed  resentment. 
46 


MISS  JERRY 

"No,  Dick,"  she  said,  hoping  to  prevent  him 
from  becoming  too  serious.  "I  didn't  think 
matters  were  so  very  bad — yet,  perhaps  ;  and  I 
guess  that  was  more  an  excuse  than  a  reason. 
You  understand,  Dick,  that  I  had  dreamed  of 
doing  something  like  this,  of  making  myself  in 
dependent — I  mean  of  not  being  dependent,"  she 
hastened  to  add  when  she  saw  him  wince. 
"Now  don't  let  yourself  misunderstand  me, 
Dick.  You  know  what  I  mean.  I  wanted  to 
feel  the  exultation  of  conquering  something  my 
self,  for  myself  ;  and  maybe,  if  I  could,  and  had 
to,  for  you,  too,  Dick." 

Holbrook  looked  at  the  girl  with  a  pained  smile. 
"And  so  my  daughter  is  tired  of  being  her 
father's  helpmeet  ?  " 

"  Hush,  Dick!  that's  all  wrong.  I  don't  know 
what  I  shall  do  with  you  if  you  keep  on  being  so 
perverse.  I  shall  write  an  article  about  you,  and 
call  the  attention  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Cruelty  to  Grown-up  Daughters.  And  you 
haven't  even  read  the  article  yet  to  see  whether 
it's  good  or  not." 

"Ah,  my  dear  Geraldine!     I  take  all  the  pluck 
and  all  the  talent  for  granted  I'm  afraid." 
47 


MISS  JERRY 

"  And  yet  you  don't  want  me  to  do  anything 
with  them." 

"  I  suppose  it  was  selfish  of  me  to  be  content 
to  have  you  make  me  happy  with  them  all  these 
years." 

"Now  look  here,  Dick,"  and  Jerry  took  pos 
session  of  his  hands.  "Don't  you  suppose  I'm 
going  to  keep  right  on  making  you  happy  with 
them  ?  " 

He  tried  to  laugh. 

"And  are  you  solemnly  certain  that  you 
haven't  a  little  pride  about  this — that  you  don't 
feel  that  it  would  be  awkward  to  have  your 
daughter  earning  wages  ?  Now  Dick,  that  isn't 
at  all  modern  and  proper.  You  didn't  have  any 
such  notions  out  in  Colorado.  I  haven't  done 
this  because  I  didn't  like  you,  you  conservative 
old  reformed  miner,  but  because  I  didn't  like  my 
self,  because — 

"  Geraldine,  listen  to  me!  If  you  had  wished 
to  take  another  sort  of  position " 

She  interrupted  him.  "I  know  what  you  are 
going  to  say,  Dick.  You  would  like  something 
stupidly  settled  and  feminine,  you  know  that, 
Dick.  You  think  newspaper  writing  is  a  little 


MISS  JERRY 

wild  and  Bohemian.     You  are  afraid  some  one 
will  call  me  a  reporter." 

"Geraldine,  suppose  I  should  say  to  you  that 
I  wished  you  to  give  this  thing  up." 

"Then  I  should  prove  how  wrong  you  were, 
father,  by  never  writing  another  line." 

He  kissed  her  and  added,  "Well,  I  don't  say 
it." 

A  few  mornings  later  she  watched  him  read 
her  account  of  the  progress  of  the  North  River 
Tunnel.  At  first  Hamilton  had  suggested  that 
she  write  the  article  as  a  woman — "A  Woman's 
Adventures  under  the  River,"  or  something  of 
that  sort — but  she  begged  off.  "You're  right," 
said  Hamilton,  "people  are  tired  of  the  everlast 
ing  woman's  view  in  the  newspapers." 

It  amused  and  interested  him  to  see  how  eager 
she  was  to  escape  the  label  of  her  sex  in  the  work 
she  did.  "I'm  proud  of  being  a  woman,"  she 
used  to  say,  "but  I  don't  wish  to  be  either 
praised  or  pardoned  for  being  one." 

She  enjoyed  the  privileges  of  her  new  position, 
which  sometimes  were  somewhat  picturesque. 
The  keeper  of  the  Central  Park  Zoo  enjoyed  in 
troducing  her  to  Juno,  and  watched  with  admira- 

49 


MISS  JERRY 

tion  the  girl's  perfectly  fearless  friendliness  toward 
the  venerable  beast.  Old  Juno,  nearly  half  a 
century  old,  was  one  of  the  creatures  at  the  Zoo 
who  left  no  doubt  of  perfect  contentment.  When 
the  keeper  brought  a  loaf  of  bread,  Jerry  did  as 
she  was  bid  in  feeding  the  beast,  and  when  Juno 
opened  her  mighty  maw,  even  exceeded  her 
instructions,  until  the  keeper  said,  "You  needn't 
put  the  bread  so  far  in." 

If  there  was  a  story  of  suffering  anywhere  Jerry 
liked  to  look  it  up,  and  she  found  new  phases  of 
life  to  be  alive  with  interest.  The  bootblacks 
and  newsboys  attracted  her,  and  she  used  to 
speak  to  them,  not  from  the  benevolent  altitude 
of  ladies  who  talk  about  "my  poor,''  but  in  a 
companionly  way  that  grew  naturally  out  of  her 
real  sympathy  and  enjoyment. 

Interviewing  people  soon  lost  its  terrors — for 
her;  and,  indeed,  she  was  made  welcome  by  the 
officials  and  great  people  who  once  had  seemed 
so  imposing,  but  who  were  very  nice  when  you 
actually  met  them. 

When  she  went  to  inquire  about  certain  ques 
tions  concerning  the  stability  of  the  great  Brook 
lyn  Bridge,  she  met  Superintendent  Martin,  the 

5° 


MISS  JERRY 

Chief  Engineer  who  supervised  the  great  under 
taking,  the  "brains"  of  the  big  bridge,  who 
walked  out  to  the  Brooklyn  tower  to  show  her 
why  no  woman  could  get  to  the  top  of  it,  where 
she  wanted  to  go. 

"There  is  no  reason,"  said  Mr.  Martin,  "  why 
this  bridge  should  not  last  for  a  thousand  years 
if  it  is  properly  taken  care  of." 

"  And  you  are  doing  that,"  suggested  Jerry. 

"  Doing  what,  taking  proper  care  of  the  bridge 
or  living  to  be  a  thousand  ?" 

"Well,"  returned  Jerry,  with  her  undaunted 
laugh,  "you  are  doing  one  and  deserving  the 
privilege  of  the  other." 

She  went  to  see  Farmer  Dunn,  New  York's 
official  weather  prophet,  in  his  eyrie,  then  situ 
ated  on  the  top  of  the  Equitable  Building,  where 
you  looked  out  toward  the  bay  and  Liberty, 
with  Trinity  Church  and  the  steaming  city  in  the 
foreground.  The  Farmer  couldn't  explain  pre 
cisely  why  the  weather  was  generally  so  obsti 
nate,  but  he  admitted  that  they  had  determined 
to  try  their  luck  with  it  in  another  much  higher 
tower  to  the  south,  chiefly,  however,  because 
~ihere  was  going  to  be — had  already  begun  to 
51 


MISS  JERRY 

be — a  new  twenty-four-story  building  next  door 
that  would  keep  off  some  of  the  weather. 
When  Jerry   had   mastered    the    complicated 


passages  of  the  Grand  Central  Station,  the  worst 
difficulties  associated  with  interviewing  Mr.  De- 
pew  were  over.  Mr.  Depew  is  credited  with 
having  improved  on  Lord  Byron's  phrase  by  de 
claring  that  fame  is  being  good  to  newspaper 
people;  and  it  has  yet  to  be  said  of  him  that  he 
ever  made  the  fact  that  one  of  these  newspaper 
52 


MISS  JERRY 

people  was  a  woman  count  against  her.  Cer 
tainly  Jerry,  awed  as  she  had  been  by  the  pros 
pect  of  calling  upon  the  distinguished  orator  and 
railroad  president,  the  genius  of  words  and  of 
affairs,  never  was  more  quickly  made  to  feel  at 
ease  than  in  the  swinging  chair  of  that  big  pri 
vate  office,  before  this  newest  subject  of  her 
exceedingly  unstudied  interviewing  method. 

Mr.  Depew  has  the  faculty  of  making  the 
newspaper  interview  seem  almost  reasonable, 
not  merely  to  the  interviewer,  in  whom  the  last 
vestige  of  any  embarrassment  at  once  disappears, 
but  to  the  most  critical  of  readers,  who  cannot 
but  yield  to  the  charm  of  that  nice  art  of  seeming 
to  answer  questions.  Jerry  was  made  to  feel 
that  the  theme  which  she  had  broached  was  one 
in  which  Mr.  Depew  felt  a  lively  interest,  and 
her  own  interest  was  proportionately  heightened. 
Her  Depew  interview  was  one  of  the  things  to 
which  Hamilton  chose  to  award  the  tribute  of 
his  never  fulsome  praise. 

"But  how  did  you  come  to  know  anything 
about  railroads?"  Mr.  Depew  asked  Jerry.  And 
Jerry  had  to  remind  Mr.  Depew  that  she  was 
wot  the  person  who  was  being  interviewed. 

53 


MISS  JERRY 

Thus  runs  the  story  of  Jerry's  mild  newspaper 
adventures,  from  which  I  must  now  turn  for  a 
moment  to  certain  others. 


54 


II 

TWO  or  three  times  during  the  winter  Pink 
Loper  had  made  brief  visits  to  the  Hoi- 
brook   house.     Kate    never  approved  of 
him  at  all.     She  looked  upon  him  with  undis 
guised  suspicion.     One  day,  when  she  bestowed 
a  particularly  accusing  glare,   he  turned  to  her 
and  said:  "What's  the   matter,    Birdie?     Ain't 
you  pleased  with  me  ?  " 

"Me  name  is  not  Birdie,  thank  you,  sorr." 
"Waal,  it  ought  to  be  Birdie,  "said  Pink.  "Yer 
look  like  Birdie.     Y're  the  very  picture  of  Birdie. 
What  do  y'.  suppose  is  the  reason  they  didn't 
name  yer  Birdie  ?  ' ' 

"  You're  no  gintleman,"  said  Kate. 

"That    shows,     Birdie,    that    yer     can't    see 

through   my   disguise.     I'm   a   real    gentleman, 

Birdie,  but  down  where  I  work  I  have  to  wear 

"this  disguise  t'  keep  from  attractin'  attention;  an' 

55 


MISS  JERRY 

yer  have  no  idea  how  that  strain  wears  on  my 
nerves.     I'm  almost  a  physical  wreck." 
' '  Why  don't  you  cut  your  hair  ?  " 


"  Birdie,  did  you  ever  hear  o'  Samson  !  " 

"Naw,  I  didn't." 

"Waal,  Birdie,  he  was  the  strongest  man  on 
earth.  Samson  was  a  regular  snorter  for 
strength;  break  chains  on  'is  arm,  throw  up  a 
four-hundred-pound  cannon-ball,  tear  a  pack  of 
cards  in  half,  bend  railroad  tracks  as  if  they  was 
56 


MISS  JERRY 

fence  wire.  And  one  day  a  woman  says  to  'im, 
'  Samson,'  she  says,  '  why  don't  yer  git  yer  hair 
cut  ? '  An'  he  says,  '  Because  I  don't  want  it  cut,' 
he  says;  'like  it  long  best.'  An'  she  says,  'but 
everybody  is  laughin'  at  yer,'  she  says.  '  I  don't 
care, '  he  says ;  'I'm  goin'  to  go  on  havin'  it  long. ' 
An'  then  she  hung  around  until  he  fell  asleep,  an' 
then  she  got  a  pair  o'  scissors  an'  she  shingled 
'im,  an'  when  he  woke  up  he  was  as  weak  as  a 
cat — couldn't  lift  nothin'  at  all.  An'  you  stand 
there,  Birdie,  an'  ask  me  why  I  don't  git  my 
hair  cut  ! " 

Kate  gave  him  a  final  stare.  "I  don't  think 
you're  right  in  your  head." 

"There  yer  go  agin,  Birdie,"  Pink  said,  with 
a  sad  look  at  her.  "Can't  yer  see  that  you're 
hurtin'  my  feelin's  ?  /  know  what  y're  goin' 
to  do,  Birdie;  y're  goin'  to  stand  there  till  yer 
lull  me  to  sleep,  an'  then  y're  goin'  to  git  a  pair 
o'  scissors — 

But  Kate  fled;  and  Pink,  following  her  to  the 
door,  came  face  to  face  with  Jerry. 

"  I've  been  jollyin'  the  girl  a  little,"  he  said  to 
Jerry. 

"  That's  very  wrong,  Pink." 
57 


MISS  JERRY 

"  I  know  it;  but  I  was  doin'  it  to  keep  up  my 
spirits.  I  felt  awful  rocky  to-day." 

"  What's  the  trouble  now  ?  " 

"  Same  thing.  Mary's  gettin'  very  wild.  She's 
pickin'  at  me  all  the  time.  An'  yer  never  saw 
that  woman  shoot  so  beautiful  as  she's  shootin' 
now.  I  just  admire  her  shootin'.  What's  that  ?  " 

Pink's  quick  ear  had  caught  the  sound  of  a 
voice  at  the  door — a  voice  that  filled  him  with 
terror.  In  another  moment  the  Rose  of  the 
Rockies,  in  all  her  glory,  was  at  the  door, 
screaming,  "Where  is  she?"  and  "Where's  the 
huzzy?"  with  Kate  clinging  madly  to  her  tow 
ering  form;  and  Pink,  failing  in  an  attempt  to 
divert  the  revolver,  threw  his  strength  against 
the  extended  arm,  shouting:  "Mary!  Mary! 
Hold  on !  Don't  shoot !  Don't  yer  see  it's  Jerry  ? 
Yer  remember  Holbrook's  daughter  ?  It's  only 
little  Jerry !  Only  little  Jerry,  Mary !  " 

The  Rose  of  .the  Rockies  lowered  a  melo 
dramatically  large  revolver  with  which  she  pro 
fessionally  split  potatoes  at  the  Mammoth  Mu 
seum,  and  surveyed  Jerry  from  head  to  foot. 

"Yer  see,  Mary,"  Pink  went  on,  the  con 
tortions  under  his  moustache  indicating  his  ex- 
53 


MISS  JERRY 

citement,  "I  only  dropped  in  t'  talk  over  old 
times  with  Miss  Jerry — the  old  days  at  the 
Panther.  Ain't  she  got  to  be  quite  a  woman  ? 


Isn't  it  wonderful!     Put  that  gun  away,   Mary. 
It  don't  look  right  here.     Put  it  away,  Mary." 

"Stop  your  noise,  Pink!  "  retorted  Mary;  and 
Jerry,  approaching  the  wild-eyed  creature,  who 
stood  as  if  in  puzzled  indecision,  remarked, 
with  an  excited  inclination  to  laugh:  "I  guess 
you've  forgotten  about  the  little  girl  who  used 
59 


MISS  JERRY 

to  be  over  at  the  Panther  Mine  until  five  years 
ago." 

"Oh,  I  ain't  forgotten  you,"  said  the  Rose  of 
the  Rockies,  in  a  tone  of  voice  that  implied  that 
she  had  still  to  be  propitiated.  "Didn't  know 
you  was  'round  this  part  of  the  country.  Might 
have  looked  you  up.  Didn't  Pink  tell  you  nothin' 
about  me  ?  " 

"Oh,  yes,"  assented  Miss  Jerry,  with  an  im 
pulse  to  shield  the  troubled  party  on  the  other 
side;  "  he  has  told  rne  what  a  remarkable  wom 
an  you  are." 

"Oh!  you  did,  did  you?"  Mrs.  Loper  turned 
to  her  uneasy  husband.  "An'  you  never  said 
a  word  to  me  about  this.  You're  a  sneak, 
Pink!  You  never  was  the  size  of  a  man  any 
how.  What  was  you  afraid  of?  Afraid  I 
wouldn't  let  you  come,  or  afraid  I'd  come  with 
you  ?  Want  me  to  have  a  string  to  you  ?  Ob, 
what  I  have  suffered  with  that  man ! " 

"I'm  sure,  Mrs.  Loper,"  interposed  Jerry, 
"that  Pink  hasn't  meant  any  harm.  He  has 
only  been  here  a  few  times,  and  probably  he  has 
forgotten  to  mention  it." 

"Ha!  ha!  "     The  Rose  of  the  Rockies  looked 
60 


MISS  JERRY 

at  Jerry  with  an  expression  of  amused  pity. 
'•Say,  a  man  could  hypnotize  you  mighty  easy, 
couldn't  he  ?  You  must  git  some  sense,  or  when 
you  have  the  misfortune  to  git  married  the  man'll 
walk  over  you — walk  over  you  !  You  don't  look 
like  a  fool,  either." 

"But  appearances  are  deceiving,"  replied 
Jerry,  with  a  look  that  Mary  did  not  seem  alto 
gether  able  to  fathom. 

' '  But  you  hadn't  ought  to  encourage  him.  You 
can  see  he's  a  man  that  needs  constant  mindin'. 
He's  worn  me  just  to  a  shadder  of  what  I  was." 

"Now,  see  here,  Mary,"  said  Pink,  "  what  do 
you  mean  by  talking  like  that  ?  I've  been  a  good 
husband  to  you." 

"Ha!  ha!"  Mary  laughed  again.  The  laugh 
was  as  musical  as  the  creaking  of  an  old  hinge. 
"Jus"  hear  that  man,  will  you!  " 

Jerry  made  a  heroic  effort  to  establish  peace, 
and  though  the  effort  did  not  for  a  long  time 
seem  to  result  in  any  definite  signs  of  an  im 
proved  attitude  between  the  visitors,  the  hostess 
was  rewarded  at  last  by  seeing  Mary  in  a  com 
paratively  tranquil  mood,  in  which  she  even 
-•went  so  far  as  to  talk  about  old  times  in  the 

61 


MISS  JERRY 

West,  and  was  induced  to  remark,  before  leav 
ing,  "  You  was  a  plucky  thing  not  to  git  scared 
at  the  gun." 

"But  I  was  a  little  scared,"  Jerry  confessed, 
"  tied  up  a  little  inside." 

"  It  was  a  bluff,  hey!  But  that's  right.  Don't 
you  let  nobody  give  you  no  song  and  dance. 
You  got  a  pretty  smart  tailor-made  look  about 
you  anyhow.  That  hat  hits  me  hard.  Good 
bye!  Pink!  What  d'you  do  with  that  gun  ? 

The  incident  afforded  an  amusing  theme  for 
discussion  when  Hamilton  made  one  of  his  irreg 
ular,  unprofessional  visits  that  evening. 

Jerry  described  the  incident  so  entertainingly 
that  Hamilton  said  he  was  induced  to  wish  that 
he  had  been  there.  "You  seem  fated  to  en 
counter  picturesque  experiences,"  he  said. 

Hamilton  had  heard  Jerry  sing  some  of  her 
mining-camp  songs,  accompanying  herself  on  the 
guitar,  and  had  heard  her  play  some  of  the  jig  tunes 
the  stockmen  and  miners  liked.  On  this  night 
she  sang  to  him  a  chant  with  weird  notes  and 
comic  words,  in  which  the  exaggeration  of  sen 
timent  was  very  droll.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  see 
as  well  as  to  hear  her  play. 
62 


MISS  JERRY 

"You  play,"  he  said  to  her,  "as  if  you  not 
only  liked  guitars,  but  loved  that  particular 
guitar." 


Jerry  smiled  without  looking  up.  "  I  do  love 
it,"  she  said.  "  I  feel  as  if  all  that  I  have  thought 
while  playing  is  somehow  stowed  away  in  its 
heart.  That's  sentimental,  isn't  it?" 

"I  should  call  it  very  appropriate  sentiment," 
Hamilton  said. 
""   "I  used  to  play  a  good  deal  at  the  camp.     But 

63 


MISS  JERRY 

I  wanted  to  dance  too.  And  so  sometimes  I  did 
both  at  the  same  time." 

"That's  what  seems  so  odd  to  me,"  said 
Hamilton,  "you  don't  look  it  at  all." 

"  Look  it  ?  How  should  I  look  to  fill  the  part 
properly  ?  " 

"I  don't  know  exactly.  You  are  what  they 
call  an  American  paradox,  I  guess." 

Jerry  laughed  at  something  in  his  manner  that 
was  at  once  quizzical  and  flattering. 

"I  tell  you,  Miss  Holbrook,"  Hamilton  said,  a 
little  later,  "you'll  have  to  write  up  those  things 
— Mining  Camp  Melodies — or  something  like 
that.  The  Sunday  Editor  would  be  tickled  to 
death  with  it,  and  you  could  bring  in  illustrative 
musical  passages." 

She  had  caught  the  thread  of  another  chant, 
and  he  listened  with  eloquent  attention,  paying  a 
second  tribute  with  his  eyes.  There  is  a  fine 
flattery  that  does  not  use  words. 

Hamilton  went  home  with  his  head  full  of  the 
quaint  music.  He  stirred  the  fire  in  his  grate 
and  found  himself  searching  in  the  coals  for  a 
Western  cabin  lighted  with  oil  lamps,  and  the 
picturesque  group  of  men — he  could  see  it  all  at 
64 


MISS  JERRY 

the  sound  of  the  chant  ;  and  he  appreciated  anew 
the  delightful  magic  of  melody. 

He  had  once   known  a  girl  who   played   the 


guitar.  She  lived  in  a  certain  Pennsylvania  vil 
lage.  She  was  a  sweet  girl  and  he  had  liked  her 
considerably  in  a  boyish  way.  Her  repertory 
was  exceedingly  limited,  but  it  was  of  the  sort 
that  made  you  willing  to  hear  it  over  and  over 
again.  Her  own  favorite  was  the  "Suwanee 
River."  She  took  to  playing  duets  with  a  young 
65 


MISS  JERRY 

man  who  had  a  banjo,  and  his  favorite  was  the 
"  Suwanee  River "  too.  After  that  Hamilton 
didn't  hear  her  play  so  often  as  he  had  thereto 
fore. 

A  young  man  sees  a  good  many  girls  in  his 
time,  naturally.  There  was  another  village  girl 
who  quite  inevitably  came  to  mind  in  any  retro 
spect  of  this  sort.  She  was  one  of  those  lively 
girls  who  speak  first  and  think  afterward,  and 
who  laugh  at  the  mischief  they  do.  Nothing 
disturbed  her  good  nature.  If  an  enemy  smote 
her  on  one  cheek,  she  turned  the  other — and 
there  was  a  dimple  in  it.  Somehow — no  one 
could  ever  understand  the  process — she  made  a 
pale  little  professor  fall  in  love  with  her.  He  had 
a  very  small  salary,  and  she  became  quite  serious 
after  a  while. 

About  the  first  really  noticeable  girl  that  Ham 
ilton  encountered  in  New  York  was  the  girl  he 
met  at  an  armory  fair  when  he  began  reporting. 
She  was  the  sort  of  girl  that  is  always  chosen  for 
the  lemonade-well  by  that  natural  selection  with 
which  ordinary  human  jealousy  never  seems  to 
interfere.  There  was  an  almost  unconscious 
grace  in  her  method  of  hypnotizing  the  young 
66 


MISS  JERRY 

men  into  overlooking  the  weakness  of  the  lemon 
ade  ;  and  she  had  the  effect  of  not  being  at  all 
diluted  herself,  Last  year  she  married  a  National 
Guard  Adjutant,  who  was  admittedly  the  pretti 
est  man  in  the  regiment,  and  made  a  great  hit 
dressing  to  match  his  uniform. 

Once  when  he  was  frivolous  and  had  more 
time,  Hamilton  took  part  in  amateur  theatricals, 
and  had  to  play  lover  to  a  girl  who  seemed  to 
have  a  kind  of  pity  for  his  want  of  theatrical  cour 
age.  On  the  night  of  the  play  he  used  all 
of  his  powers,  but  when  the  affair  was  over  she 
told  him  that  he  made  love  like  a  wooden  Indian. 
She  was  a  fine  girl,  though  a  trifle  satirical  and 
hard  to  impress,  so  that  when  she  went  on  the 
stage  he  felt  that  admiration  of  her  from  a  safe 
seat  in  the  parquet  was  the  most  practical  thing 
in  her  case. 

Then  there  was  the  pretty  girl  he  had  known 
when  he  was  in  college,  who  was  engaged 
to  a  freshman,  sophomore,  junior  and  senior  at 
the  same  time.  This  girl  had  a  marvelous  fac 
ulty  for  putting  her  heart  in  pawn,  and  get 
ting  a  good  advance  on  it  every  time.  She  was 
"-still  the  particular  beauty  of  that  college  town. 

67 


MISS  JERRY 

It  was  one  of  the  traditions  of  the  place  that  some 
student  or  students  should  be  engaged  to  her 
each  season.  She  rather  expected  it  herself,  and 
in  the  fitness  of  things  it  was  always  expected  of 
her  and  of  the  college.  And  she  seemed  as  young 
and  pretty  to  every  senior  as  when  in  his  fresh 
man  days,  he  first  acknowledged  her  charm. 

It  is  thus  that  in  youth  faces  fade  out  of  our 
lives  and  new  eyes  look  into  ours.  Familiar 
voices  grow  faint  in  memory,  and  the  lips  of  new 
friends  coax  us  to  believe  that  life  is  all  before. 
The  names  come  back  like  a  strain  of  last  season's 
song.  And  the  new  music » 

What  a  fine  instrument  the  guitar  is  when  you 
come  to  think  of  it !  How  full  of  sentiment ! 
Not  so  plunky  as  the  banjo,  and  without  the 
soulless  chatter  of  the  mandolin.  And  how  be 
coming  to  a  girl!  Strange  how  "La  Manola" 
lingers  on  the  ear  !  And  the  little  romanza  that 
made  you  think  of  moonlight  on  a  lake,  or  on  a 
river  that  flowed  by  an  ivy-grown  castle,  or  some 
thing  like  that.  The  guitar  gave  to  it  just  the 
right  flavor  of  mystery  and  romance.  .  .  . 

Did  the  string  break  ?  No,  it  was  only  a  coal 
tumbling  from  the  fender.  Odd  how  a  man  will 

68 


MISS  JERRY 

sit  up  late  staring  at  a  fire  and  almost  going  to  sleep 
when  it  is  after  midnight  Odd  how  he  will  go 
on  staring  at  the  fire  and  pondering  upon  how 
much  he  knows  of  the  world  since  that  other 
girl  in  the  Pennsylvania  village  used  to  play  for 
him  the  "Suwanee  River." 

Odd  how  he  will  sit  in  the  morning,  with  one 
shoe  in  his  hand,  trying  to  whistle  the  air  she 
played  before  she  played  the  romanza.  Odd  how 
he  will  catch  it  after  a  while,  a  little  wrong,  some 
how,  but  near  enough,  and  softly  whistle  it  at 
his  work  all  day. 

Well,  you  know  how  those  things  go.  Ham 
ilton  began  to  think  that  one  of  the  pleasantest 
phases  of  life  was  to  walk  up-town  with  Miss 
Geraldine  late  on  a  spring  afternoon ;  up  vocif 
erous  Broadway,  through  Washington  Square, 
and  under  the  shadow  of  the  stately  marble  arch 
to  Fifth  Avenue,  where  Fifth  Avenue  is  quietest. 
During  the  whole  spring  the  arch  wore  a  vast 
apron,  behind  which  men  of  the  chisel  were  at 
work  finishing  the  decorations  of  the  graceful 
span. 

"They  call  that  the  gateway  between  polite 
"and  profane  New  York,"  Hamilton  said;  "but  I 
69 


MISS  JERRY 

like  to  think  of  it  as  a  great  magnet  of  public 
spirit  drawing  the  city,  north  and  south, 
together." 


"I'm  afraid,"  said  Jerry,  "that  there  really  is  no 
geography  to  speak  of  in  New  York's  snobbery. 
But  the  arch  is  a  beautiful  and  noble  thing  any 
how.  We  should  have  more  of  such." 

"Yes,  an  arch  built  in  that  spirit  is  the  best 
arch  of  triumph." 

And  then,  it  was  very  pleasant,  when  trying 
70 


MISS  JERRY 

conclusions  with  Mr.  Holbrook  in  a  game  of 
checkers,  to  have  Jerry  sitting  by  with  the  guitar 
and  improvising  the  strangest  possible  mysteries 
of  rythm  and  melody,  or  perhaps  humming  a 
low  tune  to  some  fantastic  accompaniment  that 
suggested  the  barbaric  twang  of  an  Indian  or 
chestra. 

Holbrook  played  a  stubborn  game  and  a  long 
one  ;  and  he  took  the  liveliest  delight — though 
one  which  only  those  who  knew  him  well  could 
see  any  sign  of— in  puzzling  his  opponent.  Ham 
ilton  was  no  match  for  him  at  all;  and  besides, 
there  are  circumstances  in  which  it  is  difficult  to 
concentrate  one's  attention  on  a  game. 

So  that  it  was  a  very  natural  thing  that  Ham 
ilton  should  one  day  find  himself  in  a  confused 
state  of  feeling  when  he  received  a  proposition  to 
become  the  London  correspondent  of  the  Dy 
namo.  This  was  the  sort  of  position  he  had 
always  thought  he  would  be  delighted  to  get 
hold  of;  but  there  comes  to  the  most  of  us  a 
time  when  we  worry,  not  so  much  about  the 
appointments  of  Paradise  as  about  who  is  going 
to  be  there.  Hamilton  wished  to  decide  the 
^question  of  going  to  London  or  staying  at  home 

7' 


MISS  JERRY 

without  any  sentiment  whatever.  But  very  soon 
it  began  to  be  quite  clear  to  him  that  Miss  Geral- 
dine  Holbrook  occupied  an  extremely  practical 
relation  to  the  subject.  And  so  he  went  to  see 
her  that  night. 

She  seemed  very  much  interested  when  he 
told  her  about  it.  "  It's  a  splendid  opportunity, 
isn't  it  ?  "  she  said,  simply.  "  I  should  think  that 
you  would  be  delighted." 

"Oh,  I  am,"  Hamilton  admitted,  "  but  I'm  not 
so  much  delighted  as  I  thought  I  should  be.  If 
I  were  I  don't  think  I  should  have  come  to  you 
so  promptly." 

"Now,  what  does  he  mean?"  she  said,  look 
ing  at  him  in  a  certain  quizzical  way  that  she 
could  command. 

"I  mean,"  said  Hamilton,  "that  I  had  to  come 
to  you  to  see  how  delighted  I  was.  You  don't 
understand  that,  of  course." 

"  How  should  I  ?  "  she  returned.  "  I'm  not  a 
thought  reader." 

"  Are  you  quite  sure  ?    That  is  a  good  deal  for 
a  woman  to  confess  to  a  man.     And  you  are  one 
of  those  to  whom  I  should  have  been  most  will 
ing  to  ascribe  the  power." 
72 


MISS    JERRY 

"  But  you  are  very  hard  to  read." 

"  Have  you  really  tried,  then  ?  " 

"Not  deliberately.  I  was  a  little  afraid  of  you 
at  first — even  when  I  was  telling  you  that  I  was 
not  afraid  of  anybody.  That  was  funny,  wasn't 
it  ?  for  you're  not  a  bit  dreadful." 

"No,"  assented  Hamilton,  "I'm  quite  lamb 
like  when  you  come  to  know  me.  But  you  are 
getting  away  from  the  question,  which  is  this: 
I  want  you  to  ask  me  not  to  go  to  London." 

"Not  to  go? "she  repeated.  "That  would 
be  rather  selfish,  wouldn't  it  ?  " 

"  But  I  would  like  you  to  be  just  that  selfish. 
Of  course,  if  it  didn't  make  any  particular  differ 
ence  to  you,  I  shouldn't  wish  you  to  ask  me." 

"  You  know  better  than  that,  you  wicked  edi 
tor,"  she  said;  "it  would  make  a  great  deal  of 
difference  to  me." 

"  There  is  one  thing  I  do  know,"  he  went  on, 
"  and  that  is  that  I  have  been  in  love  with  you 
for  a  long  time.  I  realize  how  much  when  I  at 
tempt  to  think  of  going  to  London  or  anywhere 
else  away  from  you." 

"  I  didn't  think—     "  began  Jerry. 
~    "  You  didn't  think  that  it  was  as  bad  as  that. 

73 


MISS  JERRY 

Well,  it  is  just  so  bad.     1  have  stated  the  case 
without  mitigation.     Is  it  shocking  ?  " 

"I  have  never  thought  about  that,"  she  said, 
without  the  trace  of  lightness  that  crept  into  so 
much  that  she  said.  "  You  will  think  it  strange, 
perhaps,  but  it  is  true.  I  have  only  been  happy 
in  the  friendship." 

"And  you  don't  think  that  you  can  ask  me 
not  to  go  away?"  he  said,  regarding  her  in 
tently. 

"  I  don't  wish  you  to  go  away,  but  I  couldn't 
honestly  ask  you  to  stay  if  the  asking  would 
mean — 

' '  You  needn't  say  it, "  he  interposed ;  "  1  know. 
But  I  want  you  to  understand  that  I  don't  pro 
pose  to  give  you  up  so  easily  as  this."  There 
was  a  whimsical  seriousness  in  his  manner  that 
was  free  from  any  bitterness,  if  it  also  confessed 
the  stress  of  feeling  which  he  chose  to  mask  in 
this  way. 

"Oh,  don't  give  me  up!"  she  cried,  with  a 
return  of  some  of  her  lightness;  and  then,  see 
ing  in  his  face  a  suspicion  that  she  was  not  quite 
serious,  she  quickly  added:  "  I  hope  you  will  try 
to  understand  me;  I  hope  you  will  take  into  ac- 

74 


MISS  JERRY 

count  what  a  peculiar  life  I  have  led,  how  much 
in  company  with  my  father,  and  how  greatly 
this  life  has  tended  to  make  me  independent  of 
thoughts  that  might  have  been  uppermost  in  the 
minds  of  other  women." 

"I  think  you  may  depend  upon  me  to  think 
the  best  possible  things  of  you." 

They  tried  to  speak  of  other  things,  and  she 
brought  him  a  queer  little  Japanese  samisen  she 
had  picked  up  in  a  shop  on  Fourth  Avenue;  but 
a  little  constraint  had  crept  into  their  talk.  No 
companionly  easiness  of  manner  which  Hamilton 
might  force  himself  to  assume  could  rescue  the 
situation  from  a  definite  gloominess.  There  have 
been  men  who  looked  elegant  in  the  pillory.  Men 
have  died  artistically  in  the  most  unpromising  sit 
uations;  but  no  man  ever  occupied  gracefully  the 
position  of  having  just  been  refused  by  a  woman. 
It  was  like  falling  overboard  into  shallow  water, 
in  which  one  could  neither  sink  nor  swim. 

When  he  was  leaving  she  looked  quietly  into 
his  face.  ' '  Do  you  think  you  will  go  to  London?  " 

"1  don't  know,"  he  replied,  looking  back  into 
her  eyes  until  she  lowered  them.  And  he  was 
speaking  the  truth. 

75 


MISS  JERRY 

"  But  I  wish  you  would  promise  me  some 
thing,"  she  said.  "You  may  be  too  angry  with 
me  as — as  my  friend,  to  promise  anything;  if  so, 


you  might  promise  it  as  the  editor.  It  is  this :  I 
want  you  to  let  me  know  as  soon  as  you  decide 
to  go  to  London — if  you  do." 

"  I  promise,"  he  said. 

"At  the  very  first  moment." 

"  At  the  very  first  moment." 

He  wondered  why  she  asked,  and  after  he  had 
76 


MISS  JERRY 

gone  she  wondered  too.  She  only  knew  that 
she  didn't  wish  him  to  go;  or,  at  least,  that  she 
didn't  wish  this  pleasant  companionship  which 


they  had  established  to  be  abruptly  broken  off. 
She  had  told  him  the  truth  when  she  said  that 
she  had  never  thought  of  marriage.     If  she  had 
ever  thought  of  it  at  all  it  was  to  think  that  per 
haps  she  was  not  suited  to  such  an  undertaking. 
She  did  not  tell  him  that  she  had  refused  Ward 
{wo  weeks  before.     If  she  had,  his  thoughts  on 
77 


MISS  JERRY 

the  matter  might  not  have  been  tinged  with  the 
suspicion  that  comes  with  the  shadow  of  another 
man. 

Each  of  them  had  refused  to  take  her  "No." 
She  wondered  whether  this  was  really  a  compli 
ment.  It  seemed  to  her  as  if  there  must  be 
something  doubtful  about  that.  Of  the  two, 
Hamilton  had  seemed  to  feel  the  more  hurt, 
though  his  words  had  been  the  fewer.  Ward  had 
seemed,  then  and  since,  to  enjoy  a  certain  confi 
dence  of  inducing  her  to  a  change  of  mind.  He 
was  a  dexterous  man.  An  obstacle  only  made 
him  cooler.  If  he  had  given  the  slightest  sign 
of  any  feeling  that  he  was  offering  her  much,  it 
would  have  been  easy  to  acquire  a  resentment 
toward  him.  No  such  suggestion  appeared  in 
his  manner.  His  deference  had  all  the  art  that  a 
man  of  the  world  could  throw  into  an  effort  to 
win  something  he  wished  for  very  much. 

She  appreciated  the  fact  that  Hamilton  was 
hampered  somewhat  by  the  position  he  had  oc 
cupied  toward  her.  She  was  indebted  to  him, 
and  his  position  was  peculiarly  delicate.  It  made 
her  realize  her  high  estimate  of  him  to  find  that 
she  did  not  doubt  his  ability  to  emerge  from 
78 


MISS  JERRY 

the  most  delicate  of  situations  without  discredit. 

From  time  to  time  Hamilton  had  heard  rumors 
of  Ward's  connection  with  a  big  mining  deal. 
The  scheme  evidently  was  to  get  control  of  the 
Long  Creek  and  Panther  Mines,  and  the  Rock 
Ledge  Mine  to  the  north,  and  to  turn  them  over 
to  an  English  syndicate.  Ward  had  secured  Mr. 
Hoibrook's  good  will  in  the  matter  by  an  agree 
ment  to  square  things  with  the  people  who  had 
brought  suit  against  the  Panther  Mine  Company 
to  restrain  it  from  an  alleged  encroachment  on 
their  claim.  One  of  the  chief  objects  of  Ward's 
winter  campaign  in  New  York  was  the  capturing 
of  the  principal  Rock  Ledge  owners,  who  were 
New  Yorkers. 

Late  one  afternoon,  soon  after  Hamilton's  dis 
appointment,  the  young  editor  heard  a  significant 
rumor  about  the  mining  scheme,  one  that  seemed 
to  him  particularly  to  concern  Mr.  Holbrook. 
An  outline  of  the  rumor  appeared  in  an  article 
from  the  financial  writer  of  the  Dynamo.  Ham 
ilton  took  a  proof  of  the  article  in  his  pocket  in 
the  evening  when  he  went  to  dinner.  He  made 
up  his  mind  to  give  the  benefit  of  the  doubt  to 
-Holbrook  by  letting  him  look  at  the  thing  before 
79 


MISS  JERRY 

the  paper  went  to  press,  and  to  offer  to  add  any 
statements  that  Holbrook  might  choose  to  make 
by  way  of  modification  or  denial. 

When  he  reached  the  Holbrook  house  at  eight, 
he  found  Ward  there  and  Holbrook  away  at  a 
meeting.  Jerry  promised  that  her  father  would 
be  back  very  early.  "Mr.  Ward  has  been  asking 
for  him  too,"  she  said,  after  presenting  Hamilton 
to  the  other  visitor.  "  I'm  so  glad  you  two  men 
didn't  come  to  see  me.  It  is  so  much  more  fun 
to  steal  the  other  fellow's  company." 

"Evidently  we  are  both  very  willing  accom 
plices,  "said  Hamilton. 

"We  have  been  talking  about  the  West,"  Jerry 
said  to  Hamilton,  who  begged  her  to  go  on  with 
that  theme.  "  We  people  here  in  the  East,"  he 
said,  "must  learn  a  little  more  about  the  West,  if 
we  are  to  understand  the  current  history  the 
West  is  making." 

"  I'm  afraid  we  mislead  you,"  Ward  remarked. 
"We  have  been  talking  about  the  wild  and 
woolly  part  of  Western  life — the  sort  of  thing 
which  the  Eastern  man,  who  hasn't  traveled, 
supposes  to  be  typical  everywhere  beyond  the 
Mississippi." 

80 


MISS  JERRY 

"Yes,"  said  Hamilton,  "the  East  and  the 
West  are  extremely  ignorant  about  each  other." 

Ward  insisted  that  the  East  was  particularly 
ignorant  about  the  West.  "There  are  many 
ways,"  he  said,  "in  which  the  West  has  a  chance 
to  know  what  the  East  has  been,  and  what  it  is; 
but  unless  the  Eastern  man  has  been  in  the  West, 
and  has  been  there  long  enough  to  look  about 
him,  he  takes  his  notions  of  the  West  from  the 
Western  newspaper's  funny  column.  Unless  the 
East  has  its  sense  of  humor  in  good  working 
order,  it  is  going  to  make  big  mistakes  every 
time." 

Jerry  was  sure  that  the  East  didn't  understand 
the  Western  woman. 

"As  for  that,"  said  Ward,  "I  don't  believe 
that  the  West  itself  is  quite  sure  of  understanding 
her.  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  a  feminine 
candidate  for  political  office  last  September,  and 
she  startled  me." 

"Short  hair?"  asked  Hamilton. 

"On  the  contrary." 

"Pretty?" 

"I  should  say  so.     Why,  she  was  as  pretty  as 
J;he  heroine  of  a  newspaper  scandal." 
81 


MISS  JERRY 

"Now,  now!  "  cried  Jerry,  "We  newspaper 
people  will  not  like  you  to  be  so  satirical." 

"Oh,  he  doesn't  understand  the  situation," 
Hamilton  said,  smiling.  "He  doesn't  under 
stand  that  the  newspaper  man  extends  to  un 
seen  womankind  that  benefit  of  the  doubt  which 
is  the  essence  of  gallantry.  A  reporter  works  on 
the  presumption  that  every  woman  is  pretty  until 
she  has  been  convicted  on  competent  evidence  of 
being  plain." 

"Clever  theory,"  remarked  Ward.  "The 
woman  I  am  speaking  of  didn't  ask,  and  didn't 
need  to  ask,  for  the  benefit  of  any  doubt.  She 
had  no  doubts,  and  she  inspired  none.  It  was 
beautiful." 

"  I  don't  think  I  should  like  a  political  wom 
an,"  said  Jerry. 

Ward  said  their  style  always  put  him  in  mind 
of  the  woman  in  the  street  car  who  looks  scorn 
fully  at  the  conductor  and  says,  "  Stop  at  the 
corner,  please!" 

"And  yet  we   are  always   making  mistakes 

about  them,"  said   Hamilton.     "We  all  know 

enthusiastic  suffragists  who  are  the  essence  of 

womanliness,  and  we  all  have  met  the  clinging 

82 


MISS  JERRY 

vine  who  has  the  eye  of  a  doe  and  the  tongue  of 
a  parrot." 

"And  the  dreadful  woman  who  goes  into 
business,"  remarked  Jerry.  "It  might  be  awk 
ward  to  speak  of  her." 

"Not  at  all,"  returned  Hamilton.  "She  is 
always  interesting,  and  sometimes  useful." 

"Speaking  of  women  who  go  into  business," 
Ward  observed,  "they  are  particularly  formid 
able  and  awe-inspiring  when  they  describe  your 
personal  appearance." 

Jerry  looked  up  from  the  guitar  which  Hamil 
ton  had  fetched  for  her. 

"  In  a  distinguished  instance,"  went  on  Ward, 
"  when  the  account  said  '  Mr.  Ward  is  a  man  of 
about  thirty-five  or  thirty-six,  with  those  slight 
touches  of  gray  at  the  temples  which  so  fre 
quently  mark  the  hustling  American  !'  I  experi 
enced  a  peculiar  nervousness.  There  was  no 
telling  what  would  come  next.  But  I  really 
fared  excellently  as  the  account  advanced.  The 
interviewer  was  charitable." 

"Oh,  she  knew  you  were  a  Western  man," 
laughed  Jerry,  "  and  probably  packed  a  gun." 
*-    "After  all,"  said  Hamilton,  "in  order  to  read 

83 


MISS  JERRY 

a  man  rightly  you  must  have  him  translated  by  a 
woman." 

"Listen,"  Jerry  murmured  over  the  guitar, 
"  and  I  shall  translate  you  two  men  into  music." 
And  she  played  a  queer  thing  that  neither  of 
them  had  ever  heard  before.  It  was  a  jumble  of 
contradictions,  and  they  each  had  in  mind  to  ask 
for  an  explanation,  when  Holbrook  came  in. 

"You  people  seem  to  be  having  a  good  time," 
he  said. 

Ward  turned  to  Hamilton.  "A  newspaper 
man's  business  is  always  press-ing,"  he  laughed; 
"I  yield  Mr.  Holbrook  to  you,"  and  the  two 
men  passed  into  the  library,  where  Hamilton  ex 
plained  to  Holbrook  his  errand,  handed  to  him 
the  paragraph  to  read,  and  watched  the  frown 
gather  on  his  face. 

"Of  course  you  know,  Hamilton,"  said  Hol 
brook,  with  a  tense  sound  in  his  voice,  "that 
the  publication  of  such  a  thing  as  this  would  be 
exceedingly  distasteful  to  me  and  unfortunate  for 
the  scheme  in  which  we  are  interested." 

"But  it  is  now  a  matter  of  news,"  began 
Hamilton. 

"Excuse  me,  Hamilton,"  said  Holbrook,  lean- 


MISS  JERRY 

ing  forward  in  a  vehement  way,  "  it  is  a  matter  of 
private  concern.  What  right  has  the  public  to 
be  regaled  with  such  matters  to  the  detriment, 
yes,  perhaps  to  the  ruin,  of  individuals  ?" 

Hamilton  looked  quietly  at  the  older  man. 
"Mr.  Holbrook,  matters  are  private  so  long  as 
they  are  kept  so.  When  this  thing  has  been 
talked  about  on  the  street — 

"Such  matters  are  private  until  the  news 
papers  make  them  public,"  interrupted  Hol 
brook,  harshly. 

Hamilton  arose.  "  You  do  not  seem  to  under 
stand,  Mr.  Holbrook,  that  I  came  here  in  a  spirit 
of  friendliness,  intercepting  this  piece  of  news 
with  no  thought  but  that  of  modifying  so  far  as 
might  be  possible  any  injurious  effect  which 
you  might  fear  would  result  from  its  natural 
publication." 

"That's  all  right,  Hamilton,"  don't  misunder 
stand  me.  I'm  not  complaining  of  you,  but  of 
the  institution  you  represent.  I  don't  doubt  but 
that  you  are  entirely  conscientious  in  your  mis 
taken  defence  of  it.  But  just  wait  until  I  call 
Ward.  He's  as  much  interested  in  this  syndicate 
+.  matter  as  I  am." 

85 


MISS  JERRY 

Holbrook  stepped  to  the  door.  "Jerry,  excuse 
Mr.  Ward  for  a  moment." 

The  question  was  quickly  outlined  to  Ward. 
"I  can't  say  that  I  haven't  expected  this,"  he 
said  quietly  ;  "  but  Mr.  Hamilton  is  in  a  position 
of  authority — can't  he  suppress  the  paragraph, 
if  only  for  forty-eight  hours  ?  _Jhat  would 
hurt  nobody.  No  great  principle  is  at  stake,"  he 
added,  with  an  evident  desire  to  cajole  rather 
than  to  antagonize  the  editor. 

"You  are  mistaken,"  said  Hamilton,  "  there  is 
the  principle  of  good  journalism  ;  there  is  more 
than  that;  there  is  the  principle  of  personal  hon 
esty." 

"I  don't  see  how  it  can  be  so  bad  as  that," 
said  Ward,  moving  his  chair  nearer  to  Hamilton. 
"  Let  us  look  the  thing  over." 

"Gentlemen,"  said  Hamilton,  firmly,  "this 
matter  has  leaked  out.  It  has  reached  the  ears 
of  an  accredited  representative  of  our  paper.  I 
have  no  means  of  knowing  that  he  is  the  only 
newspaper  man  who  has  heard  it.  For  all  I  know 
to  the  contrary,  every  newspaper  in  New  York 
has  the  same  thing  in  type  at  this  moment,  and 
the  press  wires  have  sent  it  to  every  prominent 
86 


MISS  JERRY 

paper  in  the  country.  To  keep  it  out  of  all  those 
papers  is  impossible;  to  privately  suppress  it  in 
my  own  would  be  dishonorable." 

"Hamilton,"  said  Holbrook,  bitterly,  "as  I 
have  said,  I  believe  that  you  are  conscientious, 
but  your  theory  of  the  matter  seems  to  me  fan 
tastic.  It  is  the  sophistry  of  a  pernicious  journal 
ism.  It  is  the  kind  of  thing  that  has  been  said 
in  defence  of  the  most  frightful  violations  of  pri 
vate  right.  It  seems  to  me,  Hamilton,  that  if  you 
really  wished  to  be  friendly,  you  would  give  us 
the  chance  of  safety  by  keeping  this  out  of  the 
paper." 

"I  can  do  no  more  to  convince  you,"  said 
Hamilton.  "My  coming  here  was  purely  per 
sonal,  with  a  purely  personal  desire  to  offer  a 
service.  You  ask  me  to  suppress  something 
which  you  do  not  deny  to  be  true." 

Holbrook  moved  impatiently.  "Go  ahead 
with  it  then!  You  might  as  well  have  done  it  in 
the  first  place  without  a  word!"  He  checked 
himself.  "Pardon  me,  Hamilton,  you  have 
been  kind  to  my  daughter— 

"  He  hasn't  asked  you  to  consider  that,  father." 
''Jerry  had  been  standing  in  the  doorway.  "Do 

87 


MISS  JERRY 

you  think  that  two  against  one  is  a  fair  fight  ?" 

The  father  turned  as  if  to  reproach  her  or  to 
command  silence. 

"  No  use,  Dick,"  she  said.  "  I  can't  keep  out 
of  it.  You  see  I  am  one  of  the  wicked  newspaper 
people  myself,  and  I  know  how  /  should  feel  to 
have  some  one  urge  me  to  violate  my  profes 
sional  honor.  Mr.  Hamilton  came  here  to  do 
you  a  favor,  and  you  have  attacked  him." 

"No,  no!"  remonstrated  Holbrook;  and  Ward 
made  a  gesture  of  annoyance. 

Hamilton  turned  to  the  door.  "  I  am  sorry," 
he  said,  "that  I  have  not  been  able  to  do  the 
service  I  had  hoped.  You  are  sure  there  is  noth 
ing  you  care  to  say  ?  " 

"If  you  don't  mind,  Mr.  Hamilton,"  said 
Ward,  "  I  shall  walk  a  little  way  with  you,  and 
something  may  occur  to  me  that  we  might  wish 
to  have  said.  I  shall  see  you  in  the  morning, 
Mr.  Holbrook." 

The  two  men  left  the  house  together,  and  at 
Ward's  solicitation  they  dropped  in  at  the  Monas 
tery,  a  little  English  chop-house,  where,  if  you  go 
late  enough  at  night,  you  can  get  the  best  Welsh 
rabbit  in  New  York. 

88 


MISS  JERRY 

The  men  took  seats  at  a  secluded  table  in  a 
rear  room.  The  pictures  on  the  wall  were 
mostly  French  and  Italian.  The  only  English 
picture  in  sight  was  the  waiter.  A  good  title 
for  him  would  have  been,  "Hope  Deferred." 
He  was  fat,  but  unhappy;  and  when  a  fat  waiter 
is  unhappy,  his  gloom  is  large  and  terrible. 

When  he  had  served  the  gentlemen,  the  waiter 
retired  to  a  decent  distance  and  assumed  the  ap 
pearance  of  communing  with  himself.  In  spite 
of  his  oblivious  air  he  saw,  as  waiters  will,  all 
that  passed  between  the  men,  and  permitted  to 
himself  the  mild  entertainment  of  listening  and 
observing. 

The  older  man  spoke  softly,  but  it  was  pos 
sible  to  hear:  "You  have  been  told  half  of  it, 
Mr.  Hamilton,  you  may  as  well  hear  the  rest." 
After  a  time  the  younger  man  could  be  heard 
saying,  "Yes,  it  is  a  great  enterprise."  But  his 
face  was  passive.  "  Decidedly,"  said  the  older 
man.  "It  is  a  big  undertaking.  I  tell  you, 
Hamilton,  a  young  man  with  your  talents  could 
find  a  more  profitable  field  in  a  thing  of  this  kind 
than  in  the  grinding  work  of  journalism.  You 
'  must  have  executive  ability,  or  you  wouldn't  be 


MISS  JERRY 

where  you  are,  and  your  knowledge  of  men 
would  be  invaluable." 

The  waiter  saw  the  older  man  draw  a  paper 
from  his  pocket  and  spread  it  out  on  the  table 
between  himself  and  his  companion.  He  saw 
him  draw  out  a  smaller  paper  and  place  it  over 
the  first,  talking  quietly  and  earnestly  as  he  did 
so.  He  saw  the  younger  man's  eyes  fix  them 
selves  on  the  table  in  a  peculiar  stare. 

Then  he  saw  the  younger  man  rise  quickly, 
his  face  suddenly  white.  "  I  see,"  he  said,  in  a 
hard  tone.  ' '  Pardon  me  for  giving  you  the  trouble 
of  getting  at  the  point  in  such  a  circuitous  way. 
I  have  almost  made  you  say  the  thing  in  so  many 
words.  But  the  truth  is  that  this  time  I  didn't 
expect  it.  A  newspaper  man  is  apt  to  be  an 
optimist,  you  see,  and  there  are  always  people 
from  whom  he  doesn't  expect  the  vulgarity  of  an 
attempt  to  bribe." 

"  Mr.  Hamilton—     "  began  the  other. 

"  Save  yourself  any  further  trouble,  Mr.  Ward," 
Hamilton  went  on,  suppressing  an  inclination  to 
lift  his  voice.  "You  are  a  shrewd  man,  but 
you  have  made  a  blunder.  You  have  underesti 
mated  the  profession  and  mistaken  the  individual. 
90 


MISS  JERRY 

Many  really  clever  men  have  made  the  same 
mistake.  A  proposition  of  this  kind  should  be 
carried  to  the  business  office." 


Hamilton  should  have  stopped  here.  But  he 
was  only  a  very  young  man  after  all.  And  so  he 
went  on  with  a  strenuousness  that  owed  much 
of  its  quality  to  an  antecedent  feeling  of  repug 
nance  toward  Ward  :  "You  pass  for  an  honest 
man,  yes,  even  for  a  gentleman.  But  your  code 
permits  you  to  put  your  heel  on  a  man's  honor 


MISS  JERRY 

with  as  little  compunction  as  you  would  feel  in 
kicking. a  stone  into  the  gutter.  I  despise  your 
type.  I  despise  the  thing  you  stand  for,  I  de 
spise  every  bacillus  like  you  that  helps  to  spread 
unscrupulousness  among  honest  men." 

"  Don't  rant,"  sneered  Ward,  at  last.  "  Your 
melodramatic  expressions  of  virtue  will  need 
lessly  excite  the  waiter.  You  get  such  a  holy 
enthusiasm  out  of  this  refusal  that  it  would  have 
been  a  pity  to  have  omitted  the  opportunity." 

"  It  won't  pay  you  to  be  needlessly  insulting." 

Ward  smiled.  "  Please  don't,"  he  said.  "Don't 
threaten  me.  That  would  be  comic." 

"I  have  no  intention  of  threatening  you,"  re 
turned  Hamilton,  the  blood  in  his  face,  "  but  it 
galls  me  to  think  that  you  have  secured  the  con 
fidence  of  at  least  one  honest  man." 

"Oh,  Holbrook?"  asked  Ward,  coolly. 
"Why,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  Hamilton,  I  thought 
your  ill-feeling  toward  me  might  have  had  its 
origin  in  certain  sentiments  concerning  another 
member  of  that  household." 

"  Stop  right  there!  "  cried  Hamilton,  so  audi 
bly  that  the  waiter  started,  and  a  man  who  had 
been  dozing  at  a  desk  in  the  next  room  looked 
92 


MISS  JERRY 

up  and  rubbed  his  eyes.  "I  forbid  you  to 
speak  of  her." 

"Forbid  me  ?" 

"  Yes,  forbid  you  ;  if  you  were  not  at  heart  a 
blackguard  you  never  would  have  thought  of 
dragging  in  such  an  allusion." 

"  Dear  me!  "  was  Ward's  sneer. 

Hamilton  turned  from  him.  As  he  passed  out 
he  stopped  at  the  desk  where  the  man  had  been 
dozing  and  tossed  him  some  money.  Ward 
called  the  waiter,  relighted  his  cigar,  folded  up 
the  papers  on  the  table  before  him,  and  sat  for 
some  minutes  staring  at  a  little  Italian  picture  on 
the  wall  opposite,  of  a  man  who  had  been 
wounded  in  a  duel.  Then  he,  too,  reached  for 
his  hat,  strode  out  of  the  place,  hailed  a  cab,  and 
in  fifteen  minutes  was  in  the  card  room  at  the 
Continental  Club. 

"  How  are  you,  Winterhurst  ?  "  he  said  casu 
ally  to  a  portly,  gray-whiskered  man  half  an  hour 
later.  "  After  I  left  you  to-day  it  occurred  to  me 
that  I  might  have  let  you  have  ten  of  my  per 
sonal  shares  if  you  wanted  them." 

The  gray-whiskered  man  looked  at  him  nar 
rowly.  "I'm  afraid  I  couldn't  take  them  any- 
93 


MISS  JERRY 

how,"  he  replied.  "Been  loading  up  a  little  on 
some  other  shares  to-day." 

Ward  changed  the  subject,  but  presently  Win- 
terhurst  remarked :  "What  is  the  best  you  could 
do  on  those  ten  shares  ?  " 

"Thirty  thousand." 

"  Make  it  twenty-eight  and  we  might  talk  the 
thing  over." 

Ward  shook  his  head. 

"Twenty-nine." 

"Have  your  own  way,"  said  Ward,  laugh 
ing  ;  and  Winterhurst  took  a  sheet  of  club  paper 
and  wrote  something  on  it  in  a  precise  hand. 

"  Is  that  all  right?"  he  asked.  Ward  nodded 
and  placed  his  swinging  autograph  at  the  bottom 
of  the  sheet. 

"Now,"  Ward  remarked  to  himself,  "that  lit 
tle  newspaper  paragraph  in  the  morning  wont 
hurt  so  much." 

Two  hours  later  a  galley  of  type  in  the  Dynamo 
office  containing  the  mining  article  was  dropped 
by  a  careless  foreman's  assistant.  About  the 
same  time  came  a  rush  of  matter  concerning  a 
frightful  spring  storm  that  had  been  startling  the 
coast.  There  was  no  chance  to  reset  the  mining 
94 


MISS  JERRY 

article,  and  the  debated  paragraph  did  not  appear 
in  the  next  morning's  Dynamo.  Neither  did  it 
appear  elsewhere. 

Ward  had  taken  a  needless  precaution.  It 
would  have  saved  him  from  eight  to  ten  thou 
sand  dollars  to  have  known  that  he  would  have 
another  twenty-four  hours.  He  felt  chagrined  as 
he  strode  up  Broadway  with  an  angry  glance 
across  the  square  toward  the  Dynamo  office. 
He  had  just  muttered  an  oath  to  a  boy  who  had 
brushed  against  him,  when  he  saw  Jerry  crossing 
City  Hall  Square. 

He  caught  up  with  her,  and  for  the  moment 
forgot  some  of  his  discomfort. 

"  Where  are  you  going,  my  pretty  maid  ?" 

"  To  see  the  editor,  sir,  she  said." 

"May  I  go  with  you — to  the  door?"  asked 
Ward.  "I  shouldn't  dare  to  go  further.  .The 
editor  and  I  are  out." 

"  How  shocking!  "  she  said,  as  if  doubting  his 
entire  seriousness. 

"Yes,  I'm  afraid  he  doesn't  love  me.  May  I 
wait  for  you  ?  " 

"If  you  don't  get  tired  doing  so  foolish  a 
thing." 

95 


MISS  JERRY 

Hamilton  was  in  a  mood  that  made  Jerry  think 
of  the  time  when  she  had  been  a  little  afraid  of 
him.  "It  was  very  good  of  you  to  stand  up  for 
me  last  night,"  he  said,  trying  to  make  light  of 
the  incident.  "I  hope  that  this  day's  delay  may 
prevent  the  embarrassment  your  father  feared." 

"  And  I  hope,"  she  added,  "that  you  have  not 
taken  father  too  personally  in  this  matter." 

"I  have  tried  not  to." 

"If  you  want  to  prove  that,"  said  Jerry,  "if 
you  want  to  prove  that  you  have  forgiven  him, 
and  that  you  can  agree  to  disagree,  I  want  you 
to  come  and  see  us  to-night." 

"To-night?"  repeated  Hamilton.  "I  don't 
know— 

"There,  don't  pretend  that  you  have  some 
thing  that  will  keep  you  away." 

"Unless  something  happens,  I  shall  come 
then.  By  the  way,  I  have  a  curious  letter  for 
you  here."  He  searched  among  the  papers  on 
his  desk.  "Your  story  about  unfortunate  women 
has  interested  some  one  particularly." 

It  was  a  strange  letter,  addressed,  "To  the 
writer  of  'The  Pressure  of  Despair.''  It  was 
scrawled  in  a  muddy  ink,  and  said:  "Will  the 
96 


MISS  JERRY 

writer  of  '  The  Pressure  of  Despair'  please  call  at 
39  Cherry  Street,  third  floor,  front?" 

"The  person  who  wrote  that — and  evidently 


it  is  a  woman,"  said  Hamilton,  when  he  had 
read  the  letter  and  handed  it  back  to  Jerry,  "  was 
either  intoxicated  or  in  a  very  feeble  physical 
condition — perhaps  both." 

"  It  must  be  somebody  in  distress — great  dis 
tress,"  said  Jerry.     "  No  one  could  choose  that 
article  as  a  motive  for  writing  who  was  not  feel- 
97 


MISS  JERRY 

ing  the  pressure  of  despair.  I  must  go  and  find 
her." 

Hamilton  again  read  the  address.  "That's  a 
queer  locality.  Perhaps  you  had  better  let  one 
of  the  boys  go  around  and  look  the  matter  up." 

"  I  should  like  very  much  to  go  myself,"  she 
said,  studying  the  tremulous  lines  with  increas 
ing  interest.  "It  can't  be  wrong  for  a  woman 
to  go  to  a  woman." 

"Perhaps  not.  But  there  are  places  where  a 

woman 1  see  you  are  getting  ready  to  say 

that  you  don't  care." 

"  Is  Cherry  Street  so  very  bad  ?" 

"  It  is  a  trifle  musty." 

Hamilton  glanced  at  his  watch.  "  If  you  could 
wait  until  later  in  the  afternoon,  or  this  evening, 
I  should  like  to  go  with  you." 

"It  is  broad  daylight,"  she  insisted,  "and, 
Mr.  Editor,  please  let  me  go  alone." 

"Well,  it's  your  letter,"  laughed  Hamilton, 
"and  I  suppose,  if  you  wish  to  be  so  rash- 
She  went  away,  with  the  letter  in  her  hand ; 
and  after  she  had  gone  he  regretted  that  he  had 
not  refused  to  let  her  go  alone.  He  thought  for 
a  moment  of  following  her,  and  strode  to  a  win- 


MISS  JERRY 

dow  that  overlooked  the  street.  He  saw  her  on 
the  walk  below.  He  also  saw  the  figure  of  a 
man  at  the  corner.  It  was  Ward.  He  saw  her 


join   him.     They   spoke    together    and    walked 
away. 

Then  Hamilton  sat  down  at  his  desk  again  and 
wrote  two  telegrams.  One  was  to  the  proprie 
tor  of  the  paper,  who  was  in  Washington,  say 
ing  that  he  had  decided  to  accept  the  London 
tommission.  The  other  was  to  Jerry,  saying 
99 


MISS  JERRY 

that  he  would  be  detained  at  the  office  during 
the  evening,  making  arrangements  to  go  to  Lon 
don. 

Later  in  the  afternoon  a  letter  came  from  Hoi- 
brook,  thanking  him  for  keeping  the  matter  out 
of  the  paper.  "I  was  sure,"  said  Holbrook, 
"that  your  better  judgment  would  prompt  you 
to  do  as  you  have  done." 

In  his  answering  letter  Hamilton  frankly  stated 
the  reason  for  the  omission  of  the  paragraph. 
"I  am  sorry,"  he  said,  "that  I  cannot  seem  to 
merit  your  good  opinion." 

In  the  street  below  Ward  had  been  studying 
the  army  of  newsboys  that  swarmed  in  the  nar 
row  down-town  streets.  It  would  be  truer,  per 
haps,  to  say  that  he  was  staring  into  the  mass 
with  thoughts  on  another  matter. 

When  Jerry  reappeared  she  told  him  of  the 
strange  letter,  and  added,  "You  can't  go  with 
me." 

"  But  what  will  you  do  if  I  simply  do  go  ?" 
he  asked. 

"But  you  mustn't,"  she  replied.  "  I  have  al 
ready  refused  an  escort.  Goodbye."  She  turned 
away,  but  he  caught  up  with  her.  "Let  me 

100 


MISS  JERRY 

walk  part  of  the  way  with  you,  and  I  will  be 
very  good  and  go  just  when  you  tell  me." 

When  they  reached  Cherry  Street  he  turned  to 


her  with  a  movement  of  uncertainty.     "  This  is  a 
dreadful  place." 

"Doesn't  it  make  you  pity  them  ?"  She  was 
searching  for  the  number.  "There,  you  must 
go  now." 

"  Can't  I  wait  at  the  door  for  you  ?" 
'    "No;    that    would    make    me    nervous.      A 

101 


MISS  JERRY 

woman  is  safer  here  than  in  some  less  squalid 
parts  of  the  city." 

He  watched  her  as  she  entered  the  house.  At 
the  corner  he  turned  and  paced  the  street,  peering 
into  Gotham  Court  and  other  famous  alleys  in 
this  region  of  decayed  New  York. 

The  house  that  Jerry  entered  was  dark  and  was 
pervaded  by  a  disagreeable  odor.  The  third 
floor  seemed  particularly  gloomy  and  unpleasant. 
In  response  to  a  knock  at  a  partly  opened  door 
in  front,  a  faint  voice  said,  "  Come  in !  " 

It  was  a  surprise  to  find  the  room  so  clean. 
In  a  small  bed  lay  a  white-faced  woman  who,  as 
she  turned  and  saw  the  visitor,  and  heard  her 
greeting,  muttered,  listlessly,  "Are  you  from 
the  Mercy  ?" 

"No,"  replied  Jerry,  "I'm  from  the  Dynamo 
office.  I  received  this  letter 

"Oh!"  cried  the  woman,  starting  up  in  the 
bed,  "  I  supposed  it  was  a  man." 

In  a  moment  Jerry  asked  whether  there  was 
anything  she  could  do  to  help  her. 

The  woman  shook  her  head.  "I'm  pretty 
near  through  with  help  now."  She  looked  in 
tently  at  her  visitor.  "  So  you  wrote  that.  I 

102 


MISS  JERRY 

thought  it  was  a  man.     It  struck  me  so  that  I 
thought  I  would  like  to  see  him — to  see  him— 

and  tell  him 

"Won't  I  do?" 

"  I  don't  know.  .  .  .  Are  you  married?" 
"No,"  Jerry  answered;  "Are  you?" 
"I  was  married,"  said  the  woman,  looking 
straight  before  her.  "  I  was  married  when  I  was 
very  young,  younger  than  you  are.  We  ran 
away,  because  his  folks  were  rich  and  wouldn't 
have  it."  .  .  .  Presently  she  went  on: 
"Then  they  sent  him  away,  and  he  let  them 
send  him.  .  .  .  And  I  never  saw  him  again. 
After  that  his  father  came  to  me  with  money,  and 
I  threw  it  at  him — in  his  face — and  told  him  to 
let  me  alone." 

"And  you  never  saw  your  husband  again?" 
"No.     After  a  while  I  got  to   thinking  that 
maybe  it  was  true  that  marrying  me  would  spoil 
his  life.     You  see  he  was  a  very  fine  young  fel 
low.     .     .     .     And  I  suppose  they  forced  him  to 
go  away.     .     .     .     And  then  one  day  I  had  word 
sent  to  him  that  I  was  dead.     ...     I  thought 
that  it  might  give  him  more  of  a  chance.     .     .     . 
And  I  was  as  good  as  dead." 
103 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  could  find  no  word  to  say,  but  she  took 
the  woman's  thin  hand.  "  It  was  too  bad, 
wasn't  it,"  she  said  after  a  while,  with  a  feeling 


that  her  words  were  empty,  "that  you  had  to 
suffer  all  these  years  alone. 

"  Yes,  I  used  to  think  so.  That  is  the  way  of 
things  in  this  world.  But  I  saved  him.  Oh,  yes  ! 
he  has  become  a  great  man  now!  " 

The  woman  fumbled  under  her  pillow  for  a 
pocketbook.  Jerry  helped  her  to  find  it,  and 
104 


MISS  JERRY 

the  stricken  hands  brought  out  a  crumpled  clip 
ping  from  a  newspaper,  which  the  woman  feebly 
unfolded  to  its  full  length.  "  See!  he  has  made 
a  great  name,  it  seems." 

Jerry  looked  at  the  clipping  and  her  fingers 
trembled.  It  was  her  interview  with  Ward. 

"Things  are  very  uneven,  ain't  they?"  said 
the  woman,  peering  again  at  the  girl.  "What 
makes  you  so  nervous  ?  " 

Jerry  lifted  her  head.  "You  must  have  loved 
him  a  great  deal." 

"I  did;  and  that  made  it  awful  rough  at  the 
beginning.  But  after  I  got  discouraged  and  reck 
less  I  tried  not  to  think  of  him  any  more." 

It  was  an  old,  sad  story.  It  was  the  story 
which  always  might  bear  the  same  title:  "The 
Forgotten  Woman."  Jerry  listened  while  the 
weak  voice  told  it,  watching  the  dark  eyes  dilate, 
and  the  cheeks  flush  with  fever.  She  listened  in 
a  kind  of  stupor  under  which  the  faltering  story 
as  it  came  was  blurred  in  a  rush  of  recollection. 
Her  gaze  fell  past  the  figure  in  the  bed,  and  the 
voice  took  on  a  new  sound  as  of  something  at 
once  unreal  and  fatalistic.  The  murky  depths  of 
-life  opened  in  an  imminent  and  personal  way. 
105 


MISS  JERRY 

In  her  later  thoughts  of  that  moment  she  even  re 
called  a  consciousness  that  there  was  something 
tragic  in  her  own  quiet.  For  chance  had  touched 
her  with  the  very  breath  of  this  disaster. 

"  And  then,"  said  the  woman  at  last,  "I  got 
to  thinking  that  I  would  like  to  send  some  word 
to  him  before  I  died.  I  didn't  know  exactly  what 
I  wanted  to  say;  and  sometimes  I  didn't  know 
whether  I  wanted  to  send  that  word  because  I 
loved  him  or  because  I  hated  him.  But  I  want 
to  send  it.  I  made  up  my  mind  to  that.  I  want 
him  to  know  what  I  have  suffered.  .  .  .  After  I 
am  dead  I  want  him  to  know.  .  .  .  You  under 
stand  ?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Jerry,  brokenly,  and  vaguely  won 
dering  what  part  there  might  yet  remain  for  her 
to  play. 

"And  when  I  thought  it  was  a  man  who 
wrote  that  piece  in  the  paper,  I  thought  he  would 
understand,  and  that  he  might  go  to  him.  .  .  . 
You  see  it  was  a  foolish  thing  to  do,  wasn't 
it?  But  you  are  a  woman.  How  could  you 
know  ?  "  .  .  . 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door.     "Come  in ! " 
called  the  woman.     "It's  Mrs.  Garry." 
1 06 


MISS  JERRY 

But  it  was  another. 

Jerry  felt  a  pang  at  the  sight  of  Ward  standing 
in  the  door.  Growing  impatient  and  suspicious 
he  had  mounted  the  stairs,  determined  to  find 
the  whereabouts  of  the  girl. 

At  the  sight  of  the  bed  he  stood  irresolute  and 
as  if  to  turn  away  with  some  apology,  when  his 
eyes  rested  definitely  on  the  face  of  the  woman. 
Something  in  the  face  brought  into  his  own  a 
look  of  startled  perplexity  and  horror.  The 
woman,  lifting  herself  painfully,  stared,  trem 
bling,  at  the  new  comer,  her  lips  moving  with 
out  sound,  until  she  was  seized  by  a  convulsive 
excitement  that  voiced  itself  in  a  pitiful  scream. 

"Jim!" 

She  fell  back  upon  the  pillow,  her  wasted  fin 
gers  clutching  the  coverlet  in  an  effort  to  turn 
once  again  to  the  door,  and  as  if  still  in  doubt  as 
to  the  reality  of  that  which  she  had  seen. 

Ward  faltered  into  the  room,  his  eyes  still  on 
the  woman's  face,  which  in  the  gray  light  of 
the  room  could  be  seen  working  uncontrollably. 
For  a  moment  he  turned  to  Jerry  as  if  to  speak, 
and  made  an  awkward  gesture  that  halted  at 
some  new  sense  of  the  agony  on  the  pillow. 
107 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  had  turned  away,  and  Ward  somehow 
reached  the  woman's  side  and  caught  one  of  her 
hands. 


At  the  door  Jerry  stopped  for  an  instant,  and 
saw  him  kneeling  there  beside  the  poor  bed, 
stupefied,  his  white  face  resting  in  his  hand.  But 
the  face  of  the  woman  was  whiter  than  his.  It 
was  under  the  white  shadow  of  death.  .  .  . 


1 08 


MISS  JERRY 


III 

RICHARD  HOLBROOK  had  telegraphed  to 
his  daughter  that  afternoon,  saying  that 
he  would  not  be  home  to  dinner;  but 
circumstances  changed  his  plans,  and  less  than  an 
hour  after  sending  the  telegram,  he  reached  home. 
Jerry  was  not  there.  The  telegraph  envelope 
in  the  hall  was  a  reminder  of  the  new  crisis  in  his 
affairs.  He  absently  read  his  daughter's  name 
on  the  envelope,  and  as  he  tore  the  message  into 
fragments,  he  caught  sight  of  Hamilton's  letter 
on  the  table.  There  was  no  longer  any  annoy 
ance  in  the  subject  of  their  talk.  Holbrook  had 
discovered  some  serious  streaks  of  trickery  in 
Ward's  scheme,  and  had  withdrawn  entirely 
from  the  combination.  The  history  of  Panther 
Mine  and  the  history  of  Richard  Holbrook  were 
closely  tied  up  together,  and  thus  far  that  history 
wrrs  without  a  stain. 

109 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  came  in  with  Mrs.  Remsen-Holt,  who 
had  some  exciting  news  about  a  glorious  spring 
run  of  the  new  Bicycle  Club,  of  which  she  was 
the  President. 

At  the  door  Jerry  had  taken  a  telegraph  envel 
ope  from  a  boy.  "  I  see,  father,"  she  said,  trying 
to  be  jocose  in  the  midst  of  the  gloom  that  the 
afternoon's  tragedy  had  thrown  over  her  spirits, 
"I  see  that  you  are  not  coming  home  to  dinner 
to-day." 

"Oh, "he  said,  "I  came  home  after  all.  But 
where  did  you  get  that  ?  " 

"  From  the  boy  at  the  door." 

' '  But  I  tore  up  my  telegram  myself. "  He  looked 
at  the  floor.  "This  is  strange.  I  could  swear  it 
was  addressed  to  you." 

They  gathered  up  the  pieces,  and  laboriously 
patched  them  together.  Jerry  was  the  first  to 
trace  the  name  "  Hamilton."  Then  they  learned 
that  he  was  not  coming. 

"Old  story,"  volunteered  Mrs.  Holt,  cynically, 
from  the  mirror  in  the  next  room.  "Detained 
by  business." 

The  vital  word  was  last  to  appear.  It  was  the 
word  "London." 


MISS  JERRY 

Jerry  read  it  with  a  sensation  that  was  new  in 
her  life. 

"  Well,"  called  Mrs.  Holt,  "  I  can  see  there  is 
no  use  trying  to  talk  bicycle  to  you  to-day.  But 
promise  that  you  will  come  and  see  me  to 
morrow  afternoon." 

Jerry  promised.  She  wanted  to  be  alone.  And 
she  felt  that  she  never  had  been  so  completely 
alone  in  her  life  before.  She  had  no  suspicion  of 
the  immediate  motive  of  Hamilton's  message, 
and  its  abruptness  startled  her.  She  was  startled, 
not  only  because  the  message  was  so  definite 
and  final,  but  startled  to  find  how  much  the  cer 
tainty  that  Hamilton  was  going  away  affected 
her  feelings. 

The  situation  was  as  new  to  her  as  the  whole 
experience  of  the  winter  and  spring.  This  sen 
sation  of  loss  was  one  which  she  had  never  fan 
cied  as  coming  to  her  in  just  this  way.  As  she 
had  told  Hamilton,  her  life  had  drawn  her  very 
close  to  her  father.  In  those  free,  airy  days  of  her 
girlhood,  she  sometimes  sat  in  thought  of  the 
future,  but  she  had  never  dreamed  of  that  future 
as  being  more  than  another  phase  of  the  present. 
How  new  and  different  it  might  be,  how  the 
in 


MISS  JERRY 

wand  of  the  master  magician  might  change  the 
whole  course  of  things,  had  never  appeared  in 
her  reveries. 

When  she  had  looked  up  at  the  young  lieu 
tenant  who,  one  Summer,  used  to  interest  him 
self  in  wondering  what  sort  of  a  girl  she  would 
be  in  other  surroundings,  she  regarded  his  thin, 
brown  face  as  very  handsome,  and  had  gone  so 
far  as  to  think  several  distinct  thoughts  about 
heroes  in  general  ;  but  that  Western  air  some 
how  drove  this  form  of  sentiment  entirely  out  of 
her  head. 

No,  there  was  nothing  in  the  experience  of 
those  formative  years  of  her  life  to  make  her 
think  of  that  lover  who  should  come  and  ask  her 
father  to  stand  aside  ;  ask  her  to  separate  from 
the  companion  of  those  happy,  adventurous  years 
of  life  in  mountain  camp  and  prairie  ranch.  To 
be  sure,  she  was  very  young  then  ;  but  a 
mountain  is  a  mountain,  and  a  barrier  built  by 
the  affections  is  hard  to  break. 

Yet  Hamilton  was  going  away,  and  going 
away  very  soon.  This  was  the  hard  fact.  She 
could  not  conceal  the  change  that  had  come  over 
her,  even  when  her  father  came  home  the  next 


MISS  JERRY 

noon  with  news  of  the  failure  of  Ward's  scheme 
and  the  sale  of  the  Panther  Mine  under  the  most 
favorable  conditions  ;  she  could  not  conceal  it 


later  in  the  afternoon  when  Mrs.  Remsen-Holt,  in 
her  obstinately  absurd  bicycle  costume,  wanted 
to  know  whether  the  editor  had  sailed  yet. 
"But  I  shouldn't  tease  you,  Jerry,"  she  added, 
with  one  of  her  audacious  laughs,  "for  I  really 
think  you  are  as  droopy  to-day  as  I  was  before  I 
had  any  clubs." 


MISS  JERRY 

The  afternoon  was  drawing  to  a  close  in  Mrs. 
Holt's  garden. 

"Why  should  I  be  out  of  temper, "  Jerry  pro 
tested,  "  with  father's  good  fortune  after  a  win 
ter  of  worry  ?  And  then  you  and  your  bicycle 
are  so  amusing.  But  if  there  isn't  Pink!  " 

"  Pink  ?"  queried  Mrs.  Holt. 

A  figure  had  paused  for  a  moment  at  the  gate. 
Then  it  strolled  up  the  gravel  path  with  a  rolling 
movement  that  was  not  to  be  mistaken. 

It  certainly  was  Pink,  shorn  of  his  long  locks 
and  minus  his  buckskin  and  leather.  "  Surprised, 
ain't  yer?"  he  demanded.  "Well,  it's  all  set 
tled.  Mary's  goin'  on  the  stage — the  real  stage 
— no  more  dime  museums,  and  I'm  a-goin'  to  be 
her  business  manager." 

"What  is  she  going  to  play,  Pink?"  Jerry 
asked. 

"She  says,  first-class  parts — and  no  gnu. 
She's  goin'  to  start  in  with  '  Romeo  and  Juliet.' 
She  was  tellin'  me  she  was  goin'  to  do  'Juliet ' 
herself.  I  told  her  I  thought  she  could  do  better 
with  '  Romeo,'  but  y'  know  how  cussed  set  that 
woman  is." 

"It  never  rains  but  it  pours!  "  cried  Mrs.  Holt, 
114 


MISS  JERRY 

glancing  toward  the  gate  of  the  garden.    • '  There's 
your  editor." 

Hamilton  approached  with  an  inexplicable  look 


in  his  face. 

"I  sent  you  a  very  brusque  message  last 
night,"  he  said,  before  Jerry  could  speak.  "It 
was  ridiculous." 

"  Are  you  not  going  to  London  ?  "     She  asked 
this  in  a  tone  that  left  him  wholly  in  the  dark  as 
to  her  knowledge  and  feelings. 
"5 


MISS  JERRY 

"I  have  sent  my  acceptance;  but  the  truth  is, 
I  made  a  blunder  yesterday,  the  most  absurd 
blunder  I  ever  made,  and  I'm  going  to  humiliate 
myself  by  confessing  that  I  saw  you  meet  Ward, 
and  misunderstood  you." 

Jerry  was  silent.  He  went  on  with  a  warmth 
that,  for  him,  amounted  to  impetuosity : 

"I  can't  say  anything  worse  about  myself  than 
that.  Afterward — this  morning — I  heard  about 
that  affair  in  the  Cherry  Street  tenement,  and  I 
made  up  my  mind  to  find  you  this  afternoon.  I 
could  see,  when  I  came  to  think  it  over,  that  I 
had  been  a  suspicious  fool;  but  I  ask  you  to  re 
member — 

"To  remember  that  you  are  a  man,"  said 
Jerry. 

"If  you  like,"  returned  Hamilton,  ignoring  the 
thrust,  "yet  not  only  a  man  who,  because  he 
was  a  man,  could  indulge  a  foolish  suspicion,  but 
a  man  who  had  reasons  to  be  deeply,  profoundly 
interested  in  the  person  of  whom  he  was  thinking, 
and  who  on  that  account,  if  on  no  other,  was — 
was  not  entirely  accountable  for  his  actions." 

They  walked  back  to  the  Holbrook  house  in 
West  Tenth  Street  talking  in  this  vein.  Hamil- 
116 


MISS  JERRY 

ton  followed  Jerry  to  the  library  window.  "Take 
off  your  hat  and  stay  a  while,"  he  said,  with  an 
effort  to  speak  lightly. 


He  took  the  hat  from  her.  "What  a  won 
derful  thing  a  woman's  hat  is!  Somehow  it 
seems  to  symbolize  the  marvelous  complexity  of 
her  own  personality." 

"  I  suppose,'  said  Jerry,  "that  you  have  some 
parallel  symbolism  for  the  simplicity  of  a  man's 
hat." 

117 


MISS  JERRY 

She  got  up,  and  he  turned  quickly  to  her,  grasp 
ing  her  arms  and  looking  straight  into  her  baffling 
blue  eyes. 


"See  here,"  he  said,  defiantly,  "I  want  you 
to  sit  down  a  moment  and  let  me  talk  to  you 
seriously." 

"  Must  it  be  serious  ?  Everything  has  been  so 
serious  lately  that  it  would  be  a  relief  to  have — 

"But  I  must  be  serious,  you  understand — just 
a  little." 

118 


MISS  JERRY 

"  You  seem  to  be  determined,"  she  said,  from 
the  depths  of  the  chair. 

"I  am!     I  told  you  once  that  I  shouldn't  easily 


give  you  up.  I  meant  just  what  I  said.  I  have 
also  said  that  I  shall  go  to  London.  I  have  said 
that  I  shall  go  very  soon — within  a  few  weeks. 
Now,  this  chair  is  very  artistic,  but  how  do  you 
expect  a  man  to  propose  to  you  in  such  furni 
ture  ?  " 

"  I  don't  expect  it." 

119 


MISS  JERRY 

He  caught  her  before  she  could  get  away, 
holding  her  so  closely  that  her  eyes  were  very 
near  his  own.  "  Right  here,  and  now,  Jerry  Hoi- 


brook  :   Do  I  go  to  London  or  do  I  stay  at  home  ?  " 

"You  go  to  London." 

"  You  say  that  finally  ?" 

"Yes,  and  I'm  going  with  you!  " 

He  looked  as  if  he  didn't  believe  her.     She  had 
staggered  him  so. 

"Jerry!     Do  you  mean  that  I  may  just  put  off 


MISS  JERRY 

that  London  journey  for  a  while  and  that  we 
may— 

"No;  you  needn't  put  it  off  unless  you  want 


to.  I  believe  in  short  engagements.  And  then, 
you  know,  father — there  he  is  in  the  garden  now 
—father  needs  a  long  rest,  and  I  should  like  to 
ask  him  to  join  us  in  London.  And  he  has  told 
me,  you  quiet  fellow,  that  it  was  you  who  sent 
the  timely  word  that  made  this  morning's  sale 
'-of  the  Panther  Mine." 


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